How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer

Re:How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer by Angostura on Saturday April 04, 2020 @04:22AM (#22776964)

HSBC UK fraud department in the UK send you a text message if they believe there is fraudulent use of your card with a number to call.

The problem is that number is nowhere on the website. How do I know that text is actually from HSBC? How do I know the number I’m being asked to call is legit?

I’ve tried to explain to HSBC that they are training their customers to be susceptible to scammers but they just don’t get it. I had this conversation with someone in the fraud department where I said, “at least put that number on your website somewhere, so if I go to Hsbc.co.uk and search it turns up” “we don’t want to publicise the number sir” “Well out it on a page that isn’t displayed on the site, but which still shows up in a search if I search for the number” - “I’ll pass on your concerns”. That was about 10 years ago. They still do it.

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Re:How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer by avianlyric on Saturday April 04, 2020 @06:39AM (#22777471)

This situation is getting better. In the UK now there’s a big push among all the banks to ensure that phone numbers and links are never placed in texts. Rather they will only tell you to “ring the number on the back of your card“.

The banks got rather upset when the gov sent that COVID-19 text with a link in it. Silly move, and we’ve seen plenty of fruadsters take advantage of it.

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Re:How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer by nicoburns on Saturday April 04, 2020 @08:11AM (#22777805)

At least the link was to gov.uk

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Re:How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer by avianlyric on Saturday April 04, 2020 @09:56AM (#22778228)

Yeah, but now people are spoofing the phone number to get other links to appear in the same conversation as the COVID-19 message.

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Re:How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer by chownie on Saturday April 04, 2020 @06:13AM (#22777382)

I think the situation has improved in the last 10 years.

When I got a fraud call and was asked to authorise I told the agent that I didn't trust them unless I had a number to call to verify, so the agent on the phone told me to call the number on the back of my debit card. They give every person the number explicitly now.

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Re:How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer by projektfu on Sunday April 05, 2020 @05:33PM (#22788913)

One glaring example is our online electronic tax forms in the US. Is it at "forms.irs.gov"? Of course not, it's at the not-shady-at-all "freefilefillableforms.com".

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