A typical phishing email scam – what it looks like and how to spot them

Today we got a pretty standard phishing email in our inbox, and this is what is looked like.

The email claimed to be from the Santander bank, and told us that due to “new online banking authentication procedures” we were required to confirm our online banking details by clicking a link in the email.

This is what the email looked like.

After clicking the link we were taken to the following webpage (below) that asked us to confirm our customer ID banking number and then on the following webpages asked us for our personal contact information and online banking PIN number. Basically all the information a person would enter to access their online Santander account.

It’s a typical phishing email scam leading to a spoof webpage. As with all these types of phishing scams, the information we enter into the spoof webpage is sent straight to a scammer, and that’s all the information they need to access the online banking account.

So, how did we know this was a phishing scam, and not a legitimate communication from Santander wanting us to confirm our banking information?

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Fortunately, there are plenty of red flags, and they will apply to all phishing scams, no matter what bank the email purports to be from.

Firstly the email (pictured above) –

– Banks will address you by your name, not by generic greetings like “Valued Customer”
– Hovering over the link in the email reveals the link directs to a domain named magangatours.in, which obviously has nothing to do with Santander.
– The FROM email address is not linked to Santander
– The second sentence does not read particularly well.
– The email lacks any Santander branding or contact information.

Remember that a phishing email only needs one of the above points to be deemed a probable phishing scam. Also watch out for grammar or spelling mistakes which are popular with these kinds of emails. (Watch our “5 Ways to Spot an Email Phishing Scam” video on our YouTube channel here.)

Secondly, the webpage that the email directed us to (also pictured above) –

– The domain is not the Santander website. It belongs to husy.info (we were forwarded to that domain)
– The links in the emails also link to the husy.info domain

In this case the scammers have just copied the actual Santander homepage, which, somewhat ironically, includes security advice telling visitors to not trust any emails from Santander that do not contain your name or that ask you for your login information. Both of which have literally just happened with this scam.
Banks rarely include links in their emails due to the popularity of phishing scams, and thus we recommend avoid clicking links in such emails since they can take you to spoof domains, like the example here.

If you need to login to your online banking account (the same applies to other accounts like Facebook, PayPal or eBay) then open up your Internet browser and go there directly, without clicking links in emails.

This simple security caution will go a long way to protecting you from email phishing scams.

For further reading – for how to spot Facebook phishing scams, read here and learn how to spot a phishing scam using the Apple brand as bait here.

Stay safe out there.