Outline:
Email claims that the UK’s Tesco Bank is giving customers a chance to shop for free by handing out Tesco store vouchers. The email urges you to click a link to input your details and qualify for one of the vouchers.
Brief Analysis:
The email is not from Tesco Bank. It is a phishing scam designed to steal your personal and financial information. If you receive one of these fraudulent emails, do not click any links or open any attachments that it contains.
Example:
Subject: Tesco Savings Important Notification (ID:2949-54363)
Dear Customer,
TESCO is giving you a chance to shop for free this season at any of our outlets or online by giving out free vouchers.
This offer is only for Savings Account Users and it will be on until the end of [Date changes in different versions].
To Accept, follow the reference below and input all the details required
After validation, if selected your voucher will be sent via text message or posted to your Mailbox.
Thanks for taking part,
The Tesco Team
Detailed Analysis:
According to this email, which purports to be from the ‘Personal Finance Team’ at the UK’s Tesco Bank, you may have a chance to shop for free at Tesco outlets. Supposedly, the bank is handing out free Tesco vouchers to Tesco Savings bank customers. To qualify, claims the email, you need to click a ‘register’ link and provide the requested details.
But, the email is not from Tesco Bank and there are no free vouchers. Instead, it is a phishing scam designed to steal your personal and financial information.
If you click the link in the hope of getting your free voucher, you will be taken to a fraudulent website designed to emulate the genuine Tesco Bank site. The fake site will contain a form that asks you to provide your credit card and bank account numbers as well as your ID information, address, and contact details. The form will claim that you must provide this information if you want to receive one of the free vouchers.
All of the information you submit on the fake form will be collected by online criminals and used to commit financial fraud and identity theft.
Versions of this phishing scam have been distributed for several years. If you receive one of these scam emails, do not click any links or open any attachments that it contains.
Tesco Bank has published information about such phishing attacks and how to identify them on its website.
Last updated: December 31, 2017
First published: March 11, 2016
By Brett M. Christensen
About Hoax-Slayer
References
How to identify a genuine Tesco Bank email
‘Unclaimed Tesco Voucher’ Phishing Scam
Phishing Scams – Anti-Phishing Information
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
