Most scams involve things that the institutions themselves would never do,
such as calling you on the telephone or sending as email to have you
update your confidential finanical information.
The email scams are fundamntally no different from telephone scams or
door-to-door confidence scams, where the "bank" (imposter) calls you and
asks you for confidential information. The real institution already has
this information, and they don't need it again.
The question of how to verify the Website is the wrong question to ask.
Assume you can't verify it, and instead get the website address, phone
number, etc from your genuine bank statement. If you get something
unusual or confusing, print it out and take it to your financial
institution.
--Dean
On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Mark Smith wrote:
And don't trust emails asking for sensitive information. Verify their
requests independantly via the phone, for example, and just _don't_ use
a phone number that is supplied in the email.