Fake Royal Bank of Scotland EMail

Image via WikipediaTime For A Quickie

These guys are short and to the point. I guess they figured the fewer the words, the fewer chances to mess it all up. They’ve got a great subject line for the email. When I first saw it, I just felt bad. Then I realized I don’t have an account at Royal Bank of Scotland. And I noticed that the thing was addressed to our old friend chatika-ads at right here dot net.

Here it is. As usual, I BOLDED the Scam Flags. Since it’s so short, I’m just going to save my comments for the brief summary at the bottom. Read along:

The image “http://www.rbs.co.uk/images/logo-hp.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. (I know I said I was saving my comments but if your emails always automatically show images in your emails, you’re just asking for trouble eventually. Hiding a trojan in a .gif picture is an old trick now. Make sure you have to click some button to show the pics. Now, back to the scam, already in progress…)

Dear customer,

Your access to Online Services has been suspended. Due to a miss-match access code between your Security information. To enable you continue accessing your online account it will only take you few minutes to re-activate your account. Click on the link below and you will be taken straight to where you can activate your account.

http://www.rbs.co.uk/

Important Notice:- You are strictly advised to match your Security information rightly to avoid service suspension.

Thank You.
Royal Bank of Scotland Customer Services.

If my bank is suspending my account, I’d expect to be addressed by name, not as ‘Dear customer’. Then follows the spelling errors, lack of understanding about such simple things as capitalization, prepositional phrases and general sentence structure. Surprisingly, even though there are only 4 sentences in the main paragraph, we find 6 errors in grammar, one incorrectly developed sentence, and evidence of fraud. The link says rbs.co.uk but the link is mapped to take you to http://caraghjdjdhlavela.com/components/com_expose/ (I’ve changed a few of those letters, so don’t bother).

Well, at least they tried, right? These guys will never get it right though. Don’t fall for it.

I am Jon, descendent of at least one Scot.