Emails falsely claiming to be connected to numerous international organizations have been sent to thousands of recipients purporting to alert them to a potential lottery win. Many of the emails state that the winnings are being held with a global bank and Barclays is commonly named. Recipients are asked to make a payment, sometimes totaling thousands of pounds, in order to release their winnings. However, no such prize funds exist and the victim’s payment is taken by fraudsters.
The bank also advised consumers to be wary of phishing attacks. This is where emails purporting to be from the banks are sent to email addresses asking recipients to confirm their bank and security details, enabling the criminals to transfer money out of the victim’s account.
Barclays never holds money on deposit for lotteries like these, Barnaby Davis, electronic banking director for Barclays, confirmed. Barclays never asks customers to disclose their security and account information in this way. The bottom line for customers is that if they have even the slightest doubt about an email, to ignore and delete it.
In a bid to combat such scams and attacks, Barclays has already begun offering its online banking customers free F-Secure anti-virus software, as well as an SMS text message confirmation service.
