30 ways to stop scams article discussion

robatwork

As it's been revived....I have been searching for "Scam" podcasts as I like to hear stories of scams and scammers. They are all US based, and most I found are annoying or patronising - the AARP one can be interesting but it's more aiming at educating Americans about what scams they may find rather than giving the true story.

What really frustrates is the forgiving nature of any questions to the scamee - when what really drove the person with $250,000 that they invested in gold coins was actually greed. The blame is always 100% with the "scammer" in their eyes.

But Frank Abagnale's voice is tremendous.

If anyone can recommend a podcast about scams or other similar financial crime I'd be grateful.

pennyforthem

Just because people vent Martin Lewis eg made me loose £??????????  they do not mean it. It is out of frustration, distress etc they trusted the link in the first place because of Martin Lewis and his vast knowledge and knowing he tries to do right by the general public when they have calmed down they will understand who is really to blame. Its just self-preservation if when we had made some colossal life changing mistake when we had actually done it and all our emotions were everywhere there would probably be a lot more suicides, the truth comes when we can deal with it.

bishbut

You never know who you are talking to on the phone only who they say there are and they can say they are anybody at all and they do as has been proved time after time .Beware 

LayerChap

I've tried forwarding emails to the phishing.gov.uk address from the article as I seem to be getting a load more lately. They all bounced with:

Each of the following recipients was rejected by a remote mail server. The reasons given by the server are included to help you determine why each recipient was rejected.

    Recipient: <report@phishing.gov.uk>
    Reason:    5.7.1 TLS required by recipient

Not a great help. Or do I need to do something?

robatwork

Possibly way out of date. You can't rely on the Govt's IT to setup forwarding or make things easy. They wasted over £10billion on an NHS system recently that's been scrapped for example.
https://www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishing/report-hmrc-phishing-emails-texts-and-phone-call-scams suggests  phishing@hmrc.gov.uk is the address you can try.

[Deleted User]

robatwork said:

Possibly way out of date. 

Yeah, the article was written (and this thread created)  in 2011.  The article has been  archived, but can still be read. 

MothballsWallet

I'm sure I saw Martin tweet about it this morning, referencing the same email address and someone on the GOV.UK Twitter team replying and saying that it's still there. In fact:
https://twitter.com/NCSC/status/1255436162627444742

orchards11

14 Talking of no protection, some of the other advertisments that appear on Facebook, Instagram etc are just scams. I ordered a dog ball thrower from a site that looked very professional and legitimate, paid by Paypal because I thought there would be some protection with them if it wasn't right. Looking at this page on the Paypal community forum it seems that is NOT the case and you should not rely on Paypal payments or use them as Martin Lewis says you're unlikely to get your money back

www.paypal-community.com/t5/Disputes-and-Limitations/Fraud-Dongguan-Shunfa-Logistics-Co-Ltd/td-p/2014870

These advertisements are still coming up on social media, so beware!

LancsAmbassador

WARNING: 'NATWEST' SCAM. I recently received a mail that appeared to be from NatWest, my bank. I see scam mails regularly, so I'm accustomed to being vigilant, but this one was very clever, and it got past my Avast filter. When I moved my mouse over the sender's name to check, it appeared as customerservice@natwestsecure.com, so I opened it.

The mail said NatWest had received a request to change my mobile phone number, and the new number would become active within 24 hrs. Further down the mail was a 'Click here to cancel' link. I hit it. It took me to a series of pages that looked like the regular NatWest online banking login procedure. It was only at the 3rd page I had suspicions, so I rang the NatWest fraud team. They confirmed they had not mailed me.

I then looked up to see the web address of the 'login' page to which I was connected and saw it was peppered-mango.join.glitch.me. If the website name alone wasn't dubious, that .me at the end meant the site was registered in Mexico!

Here's my tip: if you click a link in a mail you're unsure about, check the web address of the page you go to. It ahould be obvious if it's not your bank, Paypal, Amazon Prime etc.

robatwork

LancsAmbassador said:

WARNING: 'NATWEST' SCAM. I recently received a mail that appeared to be from NatWest, my bank. I see scam mails regularly, so I'm accustomed to being vigilant, but this one was very clever, and it got past my Avast filter. When I moved my mouse over the sender's name to check, it appeared as customerservice@natwestsecure.com, so I opened it.

The mail said NatWest had received a request to change my mobile phone number, and the new number would become active within 24 hrs. Further down the mail was a 'Click here to cancel' link. I hit it. It took me to a series of pages that looked like the regular NatWest online banking login procedure. It was only at the 3rd page I had suspicions, so I rang the NatWest fraud team. They confirmed they had not mailed me.

I then looked up to see the web address of the 'login' page to which I was connected and saw it was peppered-mango.join.glitch.me. If the website name alone wasn't dubious, that .me at the end meant the site was registered in Mexico!

Here's my tip: if you click a link in a mail you're unsure about, check the web address of the page you go to. It ahould be obvious if it's not your bank, Paypal, Amazon Prime etc.

Your warning stands. May I ask if the mail you received contained any part of your real name at all?

Some scams now look very convincing but they almost never actually contain the target's name, so this is the first line of defence. Dear Customer = click nothing. 

Also as I'm sure you realise now, while you did the right thing in hovering over the sender name, natwestsecure.com is NOT Natwest's email and even if the sender was a genuine address, this is easily spoofed. 

Much better would have been to hover over the link you clicked - that would have been the dodgy looking .me address.