A new round of internet scams has been launched against UK investors. This one purports to come from the Halifax and suggests that there is a "slight error on your billing information".

It will ask you to sign on to a perfectly legitimate-looking Halifax site; the address even shows the all-important "https:" at the start of the address. However is you hover over the link, you can see (at the bottom of the e-mail in the grey area) that the real address is an "http:" one that is most certainly not anything to do with Halifax. In fact this is a particularly poor example, because most scammers will ensure that the name of the bank whose customers they are trying to rip off, appears in the real address before the last section which carries the real address.

This is because web addresses are read backwards (from the first "/" if there is on, otherwise simply from the territorial domain, such as ".uk", or in this case ".jo"). This measn that scammers can easily insert anything they want to earlier on in the address, so long as the final sections point to their "scamming" website. In this case they have not even bothered to try!

You should always look to see where a link is really going before clicking on it. Or better still, do not click on links at all, unless you really know the sender. And even then, you should be careful; in this case the sender appears, quite legitimately to be onlinehelpdesk@halifax.co.uk - but it most certainly is not.

What the criminals are after - because that is precisely what they are - is to capture your log in details so that they can then enter the system as you and take most or all of your money.

Banks never send out this sort of message and the golden rule is never to respond. Instead, if it appear to come from your own bank, use your normal log on procedure and the site will tell you if there is a real problem.

The point of your Investments is to provide for your own future, not that of a bunch of crooks.