Shinsei Bank Users: Beware of phishing.

[deadhippo]

Last night I received an email that tried to tell me that there was unusual activity in my Shinsei Bank account. It was sent to an email address with no connection to my Shinsei Bank account though.

Dear Shinsei Bank Online Customer,
We regret to inform you, that we had to lock your Shinsei Bank Online Access because we have some definite reasons to believe that your account may have been illegaly accessed by outside parties. In order to protect your confidential data, we temporarily suspended your account.
To access your account, please contact Shinsei Bank Customer Service at:
[Link Removed]
We are proud to help you with all of your financial needs and to protect your privacy and security.
As a part of our service, we may occasionally send you informative e-mail in order to:
- Keep you up to date with our special offers, products, features, and services.
- Let you know how Shinsei Bank and its affiliates can help you financially.
- Provide you with the tools and resources you need to make your financial decisions
You may not reply to this automatically generated e-mail.
We know you have a wide choice of banks.
Thanks for choosing ours.
Sincerely, Online Shinsei BankTeam
There are some simple things to remember about phishing. One is that they often don't use your name. They often have spelling mistakes and they almost always try to get you to log in to your account.
Your Bank, while I admit they occasionally might have spelling mistakes they will almust surely never ask you to log in to your account and they will always use your correct name, or at least the name that you have provided them.
Another thing to note is that even if the link looks genuine and even if the website it takes you to looks genuine and has the correct spelling in the url it does not mean it is your bank's Website.
Shinsei Bank has an announcement on their website about these phishing emails (http://www.shinseibank.com/news/news070712_phishing_e.html) and below is a transcript of their warning.
Warning: Please be careful of Phishing e-mails!!
Fraudulent e-mails in English have been reported since 11th of July 2007.Subjects of these emails have been confirmed as below, but there may be more.
Regular verification of Internet Bank Accounts!
We regret to inform you!
You access has been limited!
Shinsei Bank Account notification XX
Suspend your account!
Security notification shinseibank member! Etc.These e-mails guide you to a Phishing site of Shinsei PowerDirect login site in English, and capture customer's account number, PIN and PowerDirect password.
Shinsei Bank never sends emails to ask you for or notify you of your PIN or password, and these sort of e-mails are NOT related to Shinsei Bank.
If you receive a suspicious email never access the URL and open the given site, or enter your credentials such as your PIN in a fictitious site but delete the e-mail immediately.
It has been confirmed that most of these Phishing e-mail addresses were created randomly and sent to anyone by a spam operation, regardless of Shinsei Bank's account holder or not.
Please call Shinsei PowerCall (0120-456-007) immediately if you received these kind of fraudulent emails.
If you have accidentally accessed to this Phishing site, please call Shinsei PowerCall 0120-456-007 immediately, that will help you to change your PIN number.
Please call Shinsei PowerCall if you have any query.
Account holder: 0120-456-007
Non-account holder: 0120-456-860

[Dutch Baka]

I have had these kind of mails as well for my Paypall account. If you check the URL that they put in it as well properly you will see that it's a fake address.

Thanks for the warning.

[Mycernius]

I get them as well. The easiest ones are asking for accounts for banks I don't even use. Bank of America, Natwest etc. The golden rules is never divulge your finacial information to anyone asking.

[GaijinPunch]

Here is the best advice in the WHOLE WORLD when using the internet.

Don't EVER open links to financial firms in email. If you get one from Paypal, your bank, eBay, or anything else, simply shut the email, open up your browser, go to their site (manually), and do whatever needs to be done. 100% fool proof.

[bakaKanadajin]

Gah, Shinsei Bank, they're so inconvenient I always had to hunt a 7-11 down on the weekends because the cross-banking system in Japan sucks. You can't use another bank's machines, not even for a fee. And Shinsei being a mainly internet bank has so few actual branches unlike SMBC or MUFJ. At any rate, thanks for the info.

[RockLee]

Even internet-sites are not 100% foolproof. If people want your bank account info, or codes, they'll get it ;-). Going to the bank, and do the transaction there is almost 100% foolproof. I'd say 99,9%! There's always that 0,1% somebody planted camera's or another spy thing. :)

[mr.sumo.snr]

Gah, Shinsei Bank, they're so inconvenient I always had to hunt a 7-11 down on the weekends because the cross-banking system in Japan sucks. You can't use another bank's machines, not even for a fee. And Shinsei being a mainly internet bank has so few actual branches unlike SMBC or MUFJ. At any rate, thanks for the info.

Yeah I would call free ATM service 24/7 very inconvenient (not!!!).

Anyway, Shinsei is a second or third bank - never a first or only bank account. You cover all your bases. Find out which banks offer free ATM service at the Lawson machines and open accounts accordingly - they don't cost anything, so long as you stay in credit.

For 'hickville' dwellers such as myself six 7-11s within a 30 second to 7minute drive is ideal. 7-11 loves Nagano and we love them right back....!

--

[deadhippo]

Shinsei is pretty convenient. I don't know why you think you can't use other bank's machines (http://www.shinseibank.com/english/atm/index.html) because it is simply not true.
Access your cash at 65,000 ATMs nationwide, including 24/7 bilingual Shinsei Bank ATMs, 24/7 Seven-Eleven store ATMs, Japan Post, all major Japanese Banks and more. Also, withdraw cash from your account overseas at over 1 million ATMs worldwide.
Also I use Shinsei as my primary bank although whether you can use it or not usually depends on the company you work for.
I received the following email from Shinsei this morning.
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■■■　【Important】Be careful of fraudulent e-mails to guide you Phising site!!　　　　　　　
■■◇
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
(This notification is sent to all Alert Email Address registrants via ShinseiPowerDirect)
Dear Shinsei customers:
Fraudulent e-mails in English, with a subject such as "We regret to inform you!"
"Regular verification of Internet Bank Accounts" "Shinsei Bank Account notification xx"
have been reported since 11 Jul 2007.
These e-mails guide you to the Phishing site of Shinsei PowerDirectlogin site in English,
and capture customer's account number, PIN and PowerDirect password.
Shinsei Bank never sends emails to ask you for or notify you of your PIN or
password, and these sort of e-mails are NOT related to Shinsei Bank.
If you receive a suspicious email, never access the URL and open the given
site, or enter your credentials in the phishing site but delete it immediately.
If you have accessed to this Phishing site, please call Shinsei PowerCall 0120-456-007
immediately, that will help you to change your PIN number.
Shinsei Bank
This is a system generated notification. Please do not reply to this email.

[GaijinPunch]

If people want your bank account info, or codes, they'll get it

Not unless they have keystroke trojan on your machine. Then again, why would they go to the trouble when they could just as easily get it from unsuspecting email people. Seriously, my method works. Use it now, thank me later.

[bakaKanadajin]

Maybe it's changed recently but when I was in Tokyo, up until April of this year, I couldn't use my Shinsei card ANYWHERE but a 7-11 from 9pm Friday until sometime on Monday, basically the entire weekend. During the week, sure, I could get money in most locations but during the weekend I couldn't get money from AM/PM's or Lawsons. Only 7-11. Believe it or not Tokyo doesn't have that many 7-11's such that they're really close when you're travelling by train and foot. If you're strategic you can take money out when you see one and not worry later, but if you find yourself without cash suddenly its a pain to have to go out and hunt for a 7-11.

Also Sumitomo had real bank locations, whereas Shinsei had one in Shinjuku, one in Shibuya I think, and one somewhere far away, so only 3 actual branches in the greater Tokyo area. Pretty sad for a bank in a cash society. Really not the most convenient bank considering SMBC locations are everywhere. One thing Shinsei did have going for it was English phone help, which I had to use on one occasion. At SMBC, English help was recently stopped.