There is nothing better than getting a text from SFE telling you your loan will be in your bank within the next 3 working days, but this year students are facing fake SFE phishing messages.
Thousands of students have received a text purporting to be from Student Finance England. The message said ‘It’s important that you confirm your most up to date account details, so there isn’t any mistake when we send out the first SFE Payout’ and then linked to a phishing site, which is identical to the real SFE log in page.
One unconfirmed theory is that the scammers may be targeting people through Whatsapp group chats. Numerous members of the Middlesex freshers group received the same message
Sadly, at least one member of the group fell for it and entered her username and password.
SFE don’t use a normal mobile number when they send out their messages, the sender is just ‘SFE’. What made the scam even more convincing is that, due to the fact they used the same name to send their message, most people’s phones falsely believed was coming from the same sender. So it popped up under real Student Finance England messages on people’s phones, as seen below.
If you entered your details into this site, you must immediately change your password by going directly to the Student Finance site. We are not sure of how this scam worked beyond the sign in page, but if you entered any personal details or sent money, contact your bank immediately.
Whether this was caused by scammers trawling through Whatsapp groups or not, it is important to be wary of people who contact you through Facebook Freshers Groups and Fresher’s group chats. There is little to no vetting of members for them, and while most of the time the worst thing you’ll see is club reps telling freshers some shite event ‘this is the number 1 best thing ever you have to go to!!11!’ to get their £1 commission, sadly more serious types of fraud occur such as this one.
We have reached out to SFE about this, but even if this site is taken down, it is likely others will replace it. So make sure you’re extra vigilant when checking these sorts of messages!
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