Bank emails punters asking for their, er, email address

A number of Cahoot customers were left mildly confused this week when they received an email from the bank asking them to confirm their, er, email address.

The missive invited customers to "log in to your personal homepage at cahoot.com and select 'change my details' to check your information is correct".

Apart from the obvious concern that most people would have - that the email was a phishing attempt - it also seems rather futile, as customers who had changed email address would not receive the message and it would be irrelevant to those still using the current address.

Cahoot, which is the internet division of Santander UK, told El Reg that the email aimed to check that people still wanted to use the same address in connection with their account. The bank added that it would have contacted those customers whose email bounced back through some other means.

”A legitimate communication was issued from Cahoot this week asking customers to confirm that their email address was correct. In order to do this, they would have needed to log into their account," a Cahoot spokesperson said in a hastily drafted statement.

"Cahoot, like all other banks, would never send a customer an email asking them to enter, reconfirm or change their security details such as account numbers. We apologise for any confusion this may have caused. It is essential that internet banking customers remain vigilant at all times. Cahoot has robust security measures which it constantly reviews to ensure customers remain protected at all times,” the bank added. ®