DBS warns against phishing scams after SMS impersonating the bank surfaces

SINGAPORE — DBS bank on Wednesday (Jan 19) issued an alert about SMS phishing scams after a screenshot of a message received by a customer about the "suspension" of his account was circulated online.

The message said that the customer’s access to some services had been "cut off" and attached a link for the customer to click to confirm his details.

In a Facebook post, DBS urged customers not to click on the link in the SMS message.

“DBS will never ask for your account details or OTP (one-time password) over the phone, email or SMS. Please be assured that we are actively taking down such phishing sites,” it said in the post.

This latest SMS scam came in the wake of a recent phishing scam involving nearly 470 OCBC bank customers, who lost a total of at least S$8.5 million after being sent fake text messages that appeared in the same thread as legitimate messages by OCBC for OTPs and transaction alerts.

The swindlers impersonated the bank by having their sender name as “OCBC”, claiming that there were issues with the customer’s bank accounts or credit cards and instructing them to click on a link in the SMS message that led the customer to a fake banking website.

OCBC said on Wednesday that it would fully reimburse all victims for the money they lost through the scam and arrangements would be made by next week.