What is smishing?
Text message scams, or smishing, are similar to phishing scams except the fraudster will use text messages as a means of targeting the victim. As with a phishing scam, they’ll be designed to trick you into handing something over to a fraudster, whether that’s money or your personal information such as bank account numbers or online banking passwords.
How to spot a smishing text
Smishing texts can look very convincing at first glance, which makes it easy to catch victims off guard. Because of their text-based nature, smishing texts can sometimes be even more difficult to tell apart from a legitimate text from a company.
The important thing to look out for is that they’ll often ask you to do something which can benefit the fraudster.
They could include messages like these:
"Your account has been blocked. Please click the following link to verify your account log-in to gain access."
"Your account has been compromised. Please change your password using the following link."
"To claim your refund, please click the following link.”
How to check if a text is genuinely from NS&I
We’ll never send you a link in a text message going directly to our log-in page or ask you to enter your online banking details.
We’ll always use NSandI as the sender ID in any text messages you receive and sign-off with NS&I at the end of the message.
If you think you may have been a victim of a scam please call us immediately.
