Another Scam email?

JohnB47

Just received this in my inbox from:

GOV.UK - DVLA Account Review<updates@Personal.RenewalGOVUK.svenskaslynor.eu>

Says:

"Important Account Update
Keep Your Automatic Payments Running Without Interruption

Dear Customer, ……"

The email doesn't give any links to click on and does give good advice to "Please sign in to your account using our official website or mobile application and review your current payment method."

However it has two attachments, one a pdf and the other a txt file, which I won't open. I think one or other of those is the clever trap.

The main flag was that I don't have any " Automatic Payments Running " with DVLA. Does anyone?

I'll block it but do others agree that this is a scam?

Edit: I've just received another email from the same sender, this time with a clickable link. It refers to "Direct Debit payments" which I do not have with DVLA. I've looked at the officlal DVLA site and of course, there's no 'Account' to sign in to.

la531983

Do you seriously have to ask?

JohnB47

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82068844#Comment_82068844

No, not really. Just thought I'd flag it up.

logisticsavenue

Is this for real?

Neil_Jones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6676148/another-scam-email

Well there is an online account actually:
https://www.gov.uk/driver-vehicles-account - GOV.UK One Login required.

You can pay vehicle tax/Vehicle Excise Duty via direct debit or credit/debit card which can be a recurring payment or technically "automatic payments running", though if the amount due is low enough you don't get that option. Note that "Road Tax", a common alternative name for VED/Car Tax does not exist and hasn't done since the 1930s.

As for if you have to ask whether its a scam email… well if you don't have a licence, and thus you don't have a car and you don't drive, why would the DVLA be emailing you to review payments for something you don't have? You can have a licence but not a car registered in your name, but you don't get notified by email when your licence is due to expire - its usually by post with three months to go.

NevermoreIQuoth

The biggest clue that it's fake is the email domain is "svenskaslynor.eu" when official emails from the DVLA will use "dvla.gov.uk" domains. The PDF will likely contain a virus.

Exodi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82068849#Comment_82068849

No need - there wasn't anything particularly sophisticated in this phishing attempt and unfortunately if people created a thread every time they received a phishing email, this forum would feature little else.

The #1 thing to do is check the domain (that's the bit after the '@' symbol, e.g. gov.uk, gmail.com, etc). This pretty much rules out 99% of scam attempts.

In this example:

updates@Personal.RenewalGOVUK.svenskaslynor.eu

Of course they will try their best to make the domain look official but clearly the domain does not end in .gov.uk

The other thing is to be wary of them abusing the email address name.

What I mean is ordinarily an email address might be displayed as:

John Smith (john.smith@outlook.com)

Sometimes it's worse where only the name is displayed unless you click the contact to display the email address!

A scammer can abuse this by changing the name on their account to make it look like an email address, particularly as it enables them to type in official domains. E.g.

Personal.Renewal@gov.uk (updates@Personal.RenewalGOVUK.svenskaslynor.eu)

So it's important to always check the email address, and in particular the domain.

Seeing updates@Personal.RenewalGOVUK.svenskaslynor.eu should have automatically prompted you to junk the email without reading it.