yet another scam message

heya

just another of my infrequent, informal but (hopefully) informative things when someone elects to send me one of them scam messages, look you see. this is for the benefit of anyone unsure of how to spot fakes, irrespective or no matter how obvious they look to some of you. no, i am not really an expert and am not trying to make myself so, rather handing over info on the off chance it assists someone. 

ever since they changed the laws about marketing and using people's contact details here in the UK there has been a distinct fall in the volume of this kind of rubbish being sent. con artists are, however, always going to seek to con; criminals will behave so. 

the most recent attempt to pilfer coins off of me and countless others (probably millions) came in the form of a text message. in short, and more detail to follow, this one claimed to be off of HSBC, and gave rather unclear information on someone or other being added to my account. which presumed i had an account with the financial institution. no, i shall neither confirm nor deny the latter. 

once again this is a scam message which (more or less) instantly falls over and is exposed as fake due to the rather appalling grammar on the go. yes, if me, a quite sh!t writer, is calling you out on grammar, you have issues. unless you are telling me the statement "a new payee to MRS P COOPER has been added to your mobile banking" makes any sort of sense. not to me. 

spotting the fakes is as straightforward as looking at the domain name, or name of the web page if you like, that it wishes you to go to. everything just before the .com (or .co.uk or similar) is the actual website you are being sent to; all or anything which comes after (in this instance /hsbc) is a page on that website. never assume that because it has a name of a real company in it that it is what it says. 

in this instance, then, the website is called "untrusted-device". credit where it is due, for that is a spectacular name to register to use to dupe and con people with. sounding all authoritative and official is the key to any scam, really. but if HSBC, or any reputable (as far as banks go) company, was sending a link, you would expect and need to see their name right before the ".com" part. 

above are the registration details for this "untrusted device" website, then. information is from the most excellent website resource, who.is. which you can visit by clicking here. visiting there lets you see who has registered what website, and various other bits of information. unless, of course, they have paid money to hide that information. 

which, in this case, but of course they have. apparently (and yes i know you can see this above), the website is registered in Reyjavik, Iceland. a nice change from these scam sites being registered in Russia, i suppose, but all the same clearly nothing to do with HSBC. believe me, honest and reputable businesses do not hide their contact details. 

be very careful and very wary of any random text message (or email, or similar) advising you that you need to login to some site or other. usually, this is complete rubbish. most banks set up their own alert system for customers for this sort of thing. if you are concerned, contact your bank and ask them how to set it up. but, of course, make sure it is really your bank you are speaking to.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!