‘It looks so legit!’ Santander scam email includes full name and account number
2‘It looks so legit!’ Santander scam email includes full name and account number
A SANTANDER customer was shocked to learn that an official-looking email she had been sent was a phishing scam.
The woman contacted the bank over Twitter after she received two emails saying she had insufficient funds. The emails raised her suspicions as she no longer uses the account.
She said in her message to Santander: “I need help! I have had two emails saying I have insufficient funds, but I don’t use the account (I live in Canada now) so I don’t know what this is for?!”
A representative of Santander responded asking for her to send over screenshots of the email.
The fake documents included her full name and the last four digits of her account number, in a bid to get her to pay money into her account.
One of the hoax emails, dated July 15, was entitled ‘Payment(s) refused due to lack of funds A/C ending XXXX’.
It said: “Payment(s) refused due to lack of funds.
“There were payment(s) due from your account ending XXXX. Unfortunately, the account didn’t have enough available funds to fully cover the payment(s).
“We’ve therefore refused the payment(s) to stop your account going into Unarranged Overdraft.
“We recommend you pay money into your account so that you have funds to cover future payments.”
The customer received another bogus email on the same day, entitled ‘Insufficient funds: A/C ending XXXX’.
It said: “You have payments due.
“Your Santander account ending XXXX doesn’t have enough funds to cover payments due today.
“We may try to make these payments up until 2pm today. Please pay enough money into your account to ensure any attempts made are successful.
“Please note, where you have already authorised any payments that we must pay, this may result in your account balance falling into an Unarranged Overdraft position.”
Santander responded to the customer to confirm that they were scam emails, and asked her to send them on to phishing@santander.co.uk to be investigated.
She said in reply: “Wow really?!! It looks so legit!!”
Santander was recently contacted about a scam text, asking for someone to confirm a standing order that had been set up, including a link.
Fraudsters link people to fake websites where they get victims to hand over personal and banking information.
The bank responded to confirm that it was a scam and that it would “never include a link in any communication”.
It then asked the Twitter user to forward the message to Santander’s fraud team.
The group also said that text scams can be reported to their network provider by forwarding the text to 7726.
Another user reported being sent a similar fake text, claiming that a new direct debit had been set up with a motor company.