Criminals often send out hoax phishing scams in an effort to trick you into thinking they are from ABSA bank and in order to try and capture your personal details. Be very careful, ABSA will not ask you to click on a verification link in an email and then request your PIN number, telephone number, account details etc on the webpage that the link takes you to. There are some virus protection programs that can filter out these mails or warn you about a web page after you have clicked on an email link but the best thing is just to be aware of these mails doing the rounds.

If you receive an email from what looks like ABSA bank and it seems to be official but reads something like the following, do nothing except delete it. You can phone the bank as well to be 100% sure.

Dear ABSA Bank customer,

This email was sent by the ABSA Bank server to verify your ABSA Internet Banking account. You must complete this process by clicking on the link below and entering your account information. This is done for your protection, because some of our members no longer have access to their online access and we must verify it. To verify your e-mail address and access your account, click on the link below.

https://ib.absa.co.za/ib/ib.jsp

Please fill in the required information.
This is required for us to continue to offer you a safe and risk free environment.

Thank you
Accounts Management
Copyright © 2009 ABSA Bank

This is just one example of many variations these online criminals are using. There are others and some of them pretending to be from other major SA banks such as Standard Bank, Nedbank and FNB and in each instance you can phone your local branch but they will all tell you the same thing, do not click on the link and delete the email. Sadly many people are caught out by these types of scams online and identity theft, in particular with the ABSA bank phishing scam methods used as there have been so many of them.