Bank of Ireland warn customers to beware of text message scam

A number of customers have reportedly received text messages purporting to having been sent by the bank.

Bank of Ireland has warned its customers to beware of a text message scam claiming that online access to their account information has been frozen and requiring customers to click a link to unlock it. According to RTÉ, the text message has been received by a number of Bank of Ireland customers and contains the following text: “Your BOI online access has been locked for security reasons.” The text message invites recipients to unlock their online access and confirm their details by clicking on a bit.ly link, which subsequently asks for personal data to be submitted or can cause malicious malware to be downloaded. In a statement on Tuesday, Bank of Ireland said that this type of online fraud is called “smishing”, whereby you receive an SMS that claims to be from Bank of Ireland or another financial institution asking you to verify or re-submit confidential personal banking information in an attempt to obtain sensitive information such as personal banking details. Suspicious SMS can be in circulation at any time, and customers bring these to the attention of the Bank on an ongoing basis. Bank of Ireland say that they never request that customers give full personal log on either over the phone in an SMS or online, in an unsolicited manner. They strongly urge any customer in receipt of such SMS never to click on any link as doing so enables the download of malicious software that has the capacity to collect and compromise personal details and defraud bank accounts. Bank of Ireland issued the following advice to customers who received the text messages or suspected fraudulent emails and has also provided a section on its website which gives advice to customers on security measures.

• Do not click any links or open any attachments
• Do not input any personal / account information even if it appears to be from Bank of Ireland
• Forward the email to [email protected] immediately
• Then delete it without clicking on any links or attachments

If customers have any concerns or any questions they should contact the bank immediately on 1890 365 365.