Xavier Media®

I guess you all know by know that you should stay alert when you get an email from a bank letting you know that you have to confirm your login details to be able to continue to login. And especially if you're not even a customer in that bank

Yesterday we got 3 emails from HSBC (of course not from them, but someone trying to steal our login information for HSBC) which is kind of weird since Xavier Media doesn't have any bank accounts at HSBC. The link in the email looks like it's going to HSBC, but is you click it you end up at a different web site looking just like the HSBC login form.

This type of email are really usual (unfortunately), but this time the email was sent to a special email address we've only used once: when we signed up for an account at FreeWebSpace.com!!!! This email address has never been used before and has never been used after the sign up. This means that somehow personal information from FreeWebSpace.com is available to spammers so they can do these kinds of scams…..

If you look at the traffic statistics from Compete.com FreeWebSpace.com got about 60 000 unique US visitors per month which means that at least a few of them do have accounts at HSBC (since it's kind of a large bank) .

I don't have any idea how the personal infroamtion got in the hands of spammers and scammers, but it's a little bit worrying….. People should think twice before signing up for a free web site because in the hands of wrong company their information can be used for evil stuff…

About the author
Andreas co-founded Xavier Media® in 1996 and has since been involved in all kinds of development, marketing and making money online.