Learn how to spot spoof emails
Several signs can help you determine whether an email is legitimate or a spoof. Learn how to recognise and protect yourself from fraudulent emails.
What is a spoof?
Spoof mails (also known as phishing or hoax emails) appear to be from well-known companies. To bait you, an email may say there's an urgent situation concerning your account, then ask you to click a link back to a spoof website asking you to provide personal information.
Even if you don't supply any information, just selecting the link may enable thieves to access your computer, record your keystrokes, and capture your passwords.
Beware of spoof web forms that ask you to provide confidential information that a legitimate company would never ask the customer to enter for a particular transaction.
How to spot a spoof
- Sense of urgency - Messages claim your account will be closed or temporarily suspended and warn that you'll be charged if you don't respond.
- Spelling errors - There may be obvious spelling errors, which help spoof e-mails avoid spam filters.
Our email security practices
What NBF does
- NBF never shares your account information via a clear text email.
- NBF never accepts transaction requests via email.
- NBF's online banking platform, NBF Direct, enables secure communication between you and the bank.
- We may send you emails containing links with NBF product information, security tips etc. These links are only for convenience and you can always type in our URL directly.
How to protect yourself
- Go directly to the website you need to use: the best way to get to any site is to type its address (URL) into your browser and then bookmark it.
- Set up an image captcha: Once you have entered your user ID, you will find an image displayed onscreen. If this is not the one that you had chosen during registration, don't enter the password and close the session. A spoof, or fake, website will not be able to display the image that you opted for during registration.
Always update your bank with your latest email and phone contact details so that you receive alerts on time.