Phissing

Like many of you, I have had the round of emails purporting to come from banks. The links in the emails would have directed me to sites where I'd be asked to enter my account details only to later find that my account had been emptied PDQ.

I used to get them in the name of UK banks but more recently I've been getting them supposedly from Spanish ones as well. No bank will ever ask for your details by email.

The trick is so well known and the advice from banks is so clear that I don't know why people bother to try and use this form of scam anymore.

This morning I got an email which was a subtle twist on that theme. It said it was from someone called José and was written in Spanish. This person claimed that he needed to contact me urgently but couldn't locate me. He asked me to phone him as soon as possible on the phone number he gave and finished the message with an abrazo (a hug).

Now José is probably the most popular man's name in Spain. This could have been from anybody - even the President! However, I don't actually know an José and this person obviously didn't know my name.

So Instead of phoning him, I emailed him back to ask him who he was and what he wanted to discuss. No surprise, his email address was rejected by Terra's email server. Phissers commonly use bogus addresses to protect their identity and stop them being traced.

So nice try José. I hope you never succeed in finding anybody daft enough to phone you.

My advice to anyone:- if you get an email from someone you don't know and don't recognise asking you to phone them - BIN IT!