Dear Natwest bank, phishing spam is killing your brand.

Dear NatWest bank, I was never your customer.

Spam pretending to be from Natwest bank, rambling on with mindnumbing phrases like: "security and confidentiality are at the heart of Natwest Bankline. Your data (and your money) is protected by a number of technologies, including Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption." then asking me to:"Please login to Natwest online banking using the link below and follow the instructions on the screen." ensures that I will never be your customer, even if I did move back to the UK.

These spams are really beginning to piss me off. Last week alone, I received exactly 467 of these stupid Natwest spams. And it hit me. Phishing spams kill brands. I could never trust a bank that allow their name to be abused in such a way.

So where is the IT-brand-brigade, whose job it is to ensure that the brand isn't sullied by internet bullies? To busy commenting on blogs and youtube I assume - I've seen so many "brand managing" tactics go that route. Stopping spam like these should be part of the online brand managing gig as well. Heck, get together with a bunch of other large banks, and form a taskforce that works on stopping all forms of phishing attempts and use that in your brand communication and I might even begin to trust banks again.