Today’s Scam of the day is a  phishing email that appears to come from Wells Fargo.  It makes for compelling reading, but it is a scam.  Phishing emails, by which scammers and identity thieves attempt to lure you into either clicking on links contained within the email which will download malware or providing personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft, are nothing new.  They are a staple of identity thieves and scammers and with good reason because they work.  As always, they lure you by making it appear that there is an emergency that requires your immediate attention or else dire consequences will occur.

Copied below is the email and it comes with a Wells Fargo logo, but was sent from an email account that had no relation to Wells Fargo which is a clear indication that this is a scam.  Most likely the email address from which it was sent was from an email account of an innocent person whose email accounts was hacked and made a part of a botnet used to send out phishing emails.

I have disarmed the link in the email.  If you had hovered your mouse over the link when it was active you would have seen that the link was from an address unrelated to Wells Fargo.  Additionally, the customer service number for Wells Fargo is actually 800-869-3557.  If you had used  the customer service phone number listed in the email, you would have called the scammer.

Here is a copy of the email presently being circulated.

TIPS

Legitimate emails from your bank would include the last four digits of your account and include your name.  This email had neither.   Obviously, if you are not a Wells Fargo customer, you will recognize immediately that this is a scam.

As with all phishing emails, two things can happen if you click on the links provided.  Either you will be sent to a legitimate looking, but phony webpage where you will be prompted to input personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft or, even worse, merely by clicking on the link, you will download keystroke logging malware that will steal all of your personal information from your computer and use it to make you a victim of identity theft.

In this email you also were provided a bogus customer service number that would take you directly to the identity thief.   If you receive an email like this and think it may possibly be legitimate, merely call your bank or other institution from which the email purports to originate at a telephone number that you know is accurate and you will be able to confirm that it is a scam.

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