WARNING: NEVER click on a link in any email to go to a bank website. ALWAYS open your Internet browser and type in the address or use YOUR favorites/bookmarks to go to the bank’s website and login from there.
One random day, you get an email from your bank. Update your details or face the risk of your account being suspended! Sounds familiar? Well, if you have an email account, my guess is you have recieved at least one of these emails.
Like this one I got from First Gulf Bank (based in UAE). Now, I know its fake cause I don’t have an account with them 🙂 But, what if me (or you!) got one from a bank that we actually have an account with?
Let’s take a closer look at this email and learn how to identify such fake emails!
Notice that the “From” address is part of a legitimate domain – www.fgb.ae is the actual website for First Gulf Bank. Also, the text is poorly formatted.
But the most important thing to watch out for is the the web address (URL) this email asks the recipient to click. Looks like it belongs to the bank right? Wrong!
The following image is the header details for this particular email. (How to view email header?)
The message id field shows that this email is from a totally different domain, not fgb.ae!
Whoever sent this also tried to increase the legitimacy of the email by trying to insert the First Gulf Bank logo, but it just didn’t show up in the email.
Finally, remember the link we are supposed to click? The one that looked pretty authentic.
Right at the bottom of this image, you will notice that I have marked 2 web addresses – the first one (http://buriram.tdd.mi.th) is the actual link that you will end up in (if you were to click the email link with in the email). Clearly, it has nothing to do with First Bank and is hosted on some random website. When a user clicks the link in the email, they end up on the fake website, where, they end up entering their username and password and allowing these criminals to compromise the bank account! Folks, please be careful. I personally know people who had their Internet banking details compromised and money stolen from their account.
Ironically, I got this in my email as I was complete this article. Do read it. Gives you an idea of what’s happening out there! http://www.itp.net/579059-uae-bank-targeted-in-major-phishing-attack?tab=article
I believe the bank that this article is referring to is the First Gulf Bank, but who knows!