Anyone bank at HSBC? LOL. "Good luck with that"

[GoPodular.com]

So I just spent the past 45 minutes trying to report to HSBC a phishing scam that came in my email.  Here's the email:

HSBC Bank plc    *
HSBC Bank plc    

*    *
*

*    
   



Dear Customer,

At 6:15am this morning, our system detected that you transferred some money from
your account and so have decided to take extra security measures to ensure that
the transaction is not fraudulent.

We do this to eradicate all fraudulent activities and to keep our online banking
service secure and safe for all our online banking customers .

You are advised to follow the link below to confirm your transfer before we
complete the transaction.

* http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/pib-home
<http://www.hsbc.co.uk.1.2.home.curoi.info>
<http://palestrasespiritas.org/rje/image/hsbc.co.uk/security/index.html> *

**
/Security Advisor
HSBC Bank PLC./

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pleasedo not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
For assistance, log in to your HSBC Online Bankaccount and choose the "Help"
link on any page.

HSBC Email ID # 1009

I can tell by the links that they don't go to the official website and I caught the sloppiness of the letter.  The biggest flag however is the fact that I DON'T HAVE AN ACCOUNT WITH HSBC.  Since they want you to login at a site that isn't the true HSBC website, and it's a bank where people have their life savings, I decided to be nice and call HSBC and let them know about this.

Now it's 45 minutes later, I'm done screwing around.  I never was able to speak to anyone other than general receptionists.  I had to start the call over 3 times to try and get anyone to talk to because the automated messages dead-ended.  The closest I got was where I could leave a message (but only if I was law enforcement or a business) and a security specialist would call me back the next business day.  It also noted that after hour support was discontinued.  That's when I just hung up.

So if you bank there, I feel sorry for you.  I also wish you luck for when you actually need help, because you're not going to get it.  Unless you have a branch office, you'll never be able to actually talk with anyone.

[RayB]

Did you ask for the fraud department?

[GoPodular.com]

Yeah.  I told them three times what I received and that I was concerned people would be entering their bank information onto a website that wasn't theirs.  During the calls I used words like "phishing", "scam", "criminal",  and "fraud".  They didn't care enough to get a live person on the phone.  If I left a message, the earliest someone would be getting back to me would be Monday.

Oh well.  I tried. 

[cdbrown]

You really did try - i would have given up after 10 minutes.  Oh btw I bank with HSBC and havent had any problems recently, but when I called I got the service required - but it was banking related 

[Harry Potter]

Don't bother dude.

I get emails like that from at least 5 different "banks" a week and I don't bank with any of em.

The banks KNOW about these emails before you even get them. A friend of mine used to work for Australia's biggest bank and he always told me about these scams before they hit the majority of email accounts.

They just send them out to random addresses anyway.

[kkingsto]

And most banks (or SHOULD) have a policy where they will NEVER ask for personal information through an email.

I just delete the mesages and move on.

[GoPodular.com]

The thing that bugs me about it all is that while *I* know enough to not fall for this particular scam, there are people (like my parents) that could easily fall for it, and 99% of these scams could be stopped by a single <1 minute phone call from the bank to the ISP.

Bank: "This is John over at the bank again."
ISP: "Hi John, what's the issue today?"
Bank: "The website abcdef.com is trying to phish out our customers info.  I'm forwarding the suspect email to you right now."
ISP: "I'll take a look at it and replace their site with your standard warning about phishing scams and your customer service phone number."
Bank: "Thanks, bye."
ISP: "Bye."