Had a text from UK Home Office - obviously a scam

ryesher1

Message reads

"Please note that the latest subsidy has been fully opened online application portal, including the Cost of living support and Heating subsidy 23/24 you meet the requirements pleases submit your application as soon as you receive the message, your quota is valid for only 3 days we will notify you only once.

........ the link I am wary of have not clicked.

Thank you for your support the UK Home office."

Robbie64

There are variants of the above doing the rounds, seemingly from different Government departments. As you posted, it's a scam so can simply be deleted. The other scam text doing the rounds (I've had one) is a parking notice charge which gives you x amount of days to pay before the charge increases. Like your text, there is a link to click. I simply deleted the text.

M25

The grammar and non-localised English should set alarm bells ringing.

If it's important you will get a letter or a knock at the door.

born_again

I got one. Big giveaway was EURO's as the amount 🤣

Muttleythefrog

M25 said:

The grammar and non-localised English should set alarm bells ringing.

If it's important you will get a letter or a knock at the door.

Unfortunately these things along with incorrect or missing personalised information can be common in legitimate and often crucial Home Office letters sufficiently to fool even immigration lawyers. It's unlikely they'd ever send a text of course including on things they have no administration of like case here! My wife on one occasion even received a purported email from the Home Office that included plenty personalised information but of some other real migrant who was presumably meant to receive it!

To be blunt there are so many scams and variations on themes including increasingly it appears for any issue that arises like winter fuel payments it's almost meaningless to warn people. People hopefully can be educated in the skills necessary to spot a scam as the days when you could specify the scams out there are long gone.

FIREDreamer

Not sure what RCS is (as opposed to SMS) but there is a Report Junk option available for scams like this …

Robbie64

RCS = Rich Communication Services, an alternative (and reportedly better and more secure) to SMS.

M25

Both of those scammers use "Subsidy", "subsidies" and "welfare". None of those sound like something I hear often with British English. And the date format is also incorrect. Around 1½ billion people speak English. British English not so much. 65 million?

Another tip: if what seems like an important text message has an exclamation mark ! it's obviously a scam.

None of those scam texts above look even close to being real. I've had one before for a parcel and it looked quite good (100% copy of a genuine text most likely) but I would still not click on the link.

Login to the official site, ring the official number, go to the website manually or ignore it until you get a letter or the police at your door.

The quality of scammers' English is nearly always very poor. 

We need an autobot Grammar Police. In fact I reckon mobile suppliers already use something like that to catch scam phone calls they need to get moving with texts. Any Americanised English will always be marked as spam in my email (with exceptions for Amazon.com etc). It's quite easy to do.

I hope they're teaching about scammers in schools.

born_again

Thankfully google has report spam option, trouble is spoofed numbers that means little.