Email from 'Natwest' to update my online banking details

[StealthPolarBear]

Anyway, I have had two in the last few days, one was quite realistic, came from [email protected] etc etc, the other one they hadn't even tried - it came from "[email protected]" and included such lines as "If you could please take 5-10 minutes
out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into
any future problems with the online service. "
Anyway, it came to [email protected], which is NOT my email address, even if I had been BCC-ed it would have come TO my address. Just curious how they did this - any ideas?

[LyraSilvertongue]

I think they just send them to any combination of words and letters and hope that it's a real email address. I don't know. I get these in my junk mail box all the time. How stupid do they think I am?

[nell12]

Forward it to Natwest Customer services... this is obv dodgy

[niceglasses]

Don't do it. Sounds dodgy. Leave well alone and ring in morning. I did this once and was scam.

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

I had one of these, I could tell straight away that it was a fake as the NatWest logo wasn't quite right, and the biggest giveaway was I don't have a NatWest account!

I think they take potluck on email addresses and type millions of variables in the hope they strike gold.

[misdee]

go to natwerst site, look up email for spoof emails then forward it onto them.

then delete.

[SquonkTheBeerGuru]

I get lots of these.

They are all for banks that I don't and have never banked with.

Do NOT respond to it.

[JRocks]

It's a phishing scam, there's been lots of them for all the banks lately. In hotmail, the junk folder has the option to 'report phishing' something or other. I guess they then forward it to relevant bank for investigation. I keep getting them for banks I don't even use...

[KatyMac]

It's not actually your email addy they send to - they have a programme that substitutes letters in the email addy to 'find' a match - who it's addressed to is irrelevant

[LyraSilvertongue]

There must be such a thing as an email address generator which spews out thousands of combinations and they just spam the lot hoping one or two will be real.

[foofi]

I get things like this every day. Just delete and forget.

[WendyWeber]

I got this the other day which appears to have come from me to me - how do they do that???

[brimfull]

I get these and don't have a Natwest account.

[bran]

Any email from a bank is definitely fraudulent - banks NEVER send emails.

Like LyraS I'm pretty sure that fraudsters can send huge volumes of emails using software that has lists of first names and surnames uses the lists to generate every possible permutation of these names.

[StealthPolarBear]

No, sorry I get that it's a fraud, like I said the emails don't even sound professional.
What I don't understand is how, when it has been sent to a completely different email address, it has ended up in my inbox. Even spoofing the email header wouldn't do that, it would still go 'to' whoever it was sent to iyswim. KatyMac, not sure I understand what you mean?

[WanderingTrolley]

I have had emails, increasing in hysteria, for the past few weeks from a bank with which I have never banked.

I am expecting the next one to say "Wahdiding Troolay, we have closed all your accounts and are going to have you shot. You have failed to respond to our requests for all your bank records and the keys to your car. Panic! Panic! etc."

It is near painful not to reply "Oh, do fuck off, there's a dear."

I think they do it by being in secret cahoots with microsoft, personally.

[conspiracy theorist]

[WanderingTrolley]

So if my email is [email protected], the spammers use a program that finds the next nearest letters/digits. Some poor sod at [email protected] gets all my spam, as does [email protected].

If you look at your spam headers, many of them won't have your exact email address.

Conspiracy.

[StealthPolarBear]

pmsl!

[StealthPolarBear]

that's not how it works, is it? I thought web mail had to be an exact match! That's interesting

[Greyriverside]

Ok I just tested this to be sure.

You send an email to [email protected] for example and BCC it to 10,000 made up addresses. If one of the made up ones is your address then you get the email, but it says at the top "to [email protected]"

[Greyriverside]

If you're using Outlook express for example. Right click the email, choose properties and then go on the Details Tab. Your real email address should be buried in there.

[QuintessentialShadows]

Be careful HOW you forward it, some such emails contains scripts that logs on to their server (and so confirm what your email address actually is, and that it is in use, and leave you open to spoof mail and fishing attacks) when you just hit the foreward button. I dont know how or why. But my technical person always told me to foreward suspicious mails as attachments rather than hit forward.

[LyraSilvertongue]

I made the mistake of opening a dodgy looking 'latest hot deals' type email, thereby confirming that my address is real and in use. Now I'm getting dozens of them every day.

[fin54]

PLEASE PLEASE DON'T DO THIS, I did it two weeks ago when I got an email from the Halifax, £5000 was removed from my account and it has taken me from the 27th of March to sort it out with them.Glad to say I got it all returned to my account.

[LyraSilvertongue]

Fin, she knows it's fraud, she's just wondering how they got her email address.