Don't get hooked by phishing scam

Date published: 31 July 2010

A new email scam has been reported by a Bury resident to the council’s trading standards team.

The email, claiming to be from popular money transfer site PayPal, asked the reader to send details of his bank account so they could update their records. It also asked for his date of birth, mother’s maiden name, employer, and card PIN numbers.

Angela Lomax, trading standards unit manager, said: “Any person who replies to such an email would be left exposed and vulnerable to extensive ID theft. Fortunately, on this occasion the Bury resident contacted PayPal to query this email and following their advice he deleted the email and took no further action.”

Such a scam is known as phishing. The email would have been sent to a large number of people and the scammers would then just wait and see if someone replied.

Phishing emails are designed to look extremely similar to genuine emails; however, there will be subtle differences. The sender’s address will be similar but not identical to the genuine organisation, for example info@_paypal.com as opposed to the authentic one info@paypal.com

Ms Lomax added: “A genuine financial institution would never ask a customer to divulge details of their account or their security answers. This applies to all financial interactions in all circumstances, be it by telephone, internet and face to face.”

Further information on how to avoid phishing scams can be found at: http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/watch_out/Commonscams/phishing/