Current scams
Comments
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Had a call from a guy who said that my loft insulation was inadequate and needed to be replaced, how he knew that without coming and inspecting it I do not know.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE HE COULD DO THE JOB FOR ME, but only if I took up the offer there and then!
Multiple choice question, guess what my answer was?
a) take a running jump off tower bridge
b) Yes - but only if it is free
c) - - it up - ----- - - - (the sun doesn't shine there.)
d) How do you insulate the loft in a flat roofed bungalow?
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I am delighted to see that the piece of Scum who conned an old lady out of £160 to inject her with a fake vaccine in London has been arrested.
I am sure that some of my fellow CT members would like to reciprocate the gesture but maybe get the Russians to do the injecting.
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I know the perfect tool for dealing with him. I wouldn’t charge a penny either......
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Maybe he has a drone and looks for roof tops with no snow on them.
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Not a scam but a cautionary tale.
Wanting a new 13 pin caravan plug I ordered it on Amazon using my Credit Card, only for it to be declined
I last used it successfully on EBay 4 days ago so tried to verify it again but the bank kept declining it.Rang the Halifax Credit Card number and the nice lady told me 2 days ago someone tried to take a payment of 17 pence that was non related to any previous purchases, and if it went through it would be enough to open the card account to that person allowing more and bigger sums to be charged.
Halifax sensed a card fraud and closed the card account, sent me a text which unfortunately due to a Vodaphone blip I didn't receive. So full marks to the bank in catching this and acting upon it, just have to wait for a new card now.
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We've heard of this one before as a way of 'testing' to see if it gets noticed prior to attempting to gain much larger sums. Well done Halifax.
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That's weird - I was responding to 'a cautionary tale' but it's disappeared.
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They do it in to find out if you or your bank notice, if you don't check your account on a regular basis they can go for bigger sums. If you purchase a lot of small value items it can be hard to spot. Also a few thousand 50p sums taken from many accounts add up to quite a big amount!
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We’ve had a couple of texts lately, supposedly from the Halifax, although they haven’t come through on the normal text string. According to the text a new payee has been set up on our account and there is a link to log onto if you haven’t set it up. Presumably if you click on the link they then try and mine your login details. Checks of the account, not of course using their links, confirmed they were scams.
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I've just received this one. Boris sure kept it quiet!
Note 'off' instead of 'of'. Blocked and Deleted User.
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OH has just had a competition scam sent through. £20,000 in cash, or tickets to see an Elvis Tribute.
It said press 1 for the money, 2 for the show...........
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Talking to an elderly neighbour the other day he mentioned a variation on a scam that had him worried. He's quite alert so when someone rang him he cottoned on pretty quick and put the phone down. 20 minutes later he received another call this time from his bank asking if he had a recent call that sounded strange. He said yes he had and they said that his account was one of a batch that they were worried might be being targeted by scammers. They told him they were trying to contact all of those customers to warn them but obviously they were behind the scammers. He said they wanted to make sure there had been no activity on his account and he almost, almost gave them his details, so convincing were they but fortunately common sense kicked in.
He felt so worried he actually went to the bank the following day to double check all was ok and stood outside for 90 minutes until they deemed to open for customers.
Whatever happened to Tar and Feathering?
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Another scam from today. I pay when the BBC remind me & online not DD. It’s easy to tell this one as the BBC have me down as my chosen name not as my email. Keep vigilant👍🏻
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Playing along with scam callers can brighten up a dull day, my best yet was a call informing me that I qualified for a government grant to replace my dangerous roof (news to me), so I expressed alarm that my roof was dangerous and that I needed to go outside and inspect it and was able to report that the roof was still there. I managed to keep the dialogue going for about 10 minutes when I asked the caller if they also covered windows and Yes was the answer I replied that was good as i thought that I had a bug on my computer. That was when the phone was put down on me.
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Just had the unpaid parcel one...........delete!👍
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I read in the Telegraph the other day that impersonation fraud doubled in 2020. Also that although according to the ONS fraud accounts for a third of reported crime in the UK, only 1% of police time is devoted to it.
Yesterdays attempt was a text from the TSB saying our account may have been compromised. It suggested I log in through the provided link to check the full message. We don’t have an account with the TSB.😡
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I've had several automated phone call recently telling me there is an issue with my amazon Prime account. I don't know what they were asking me to do as i didn't stay on the line long enough to find out, the robotic voice is terrible.
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I've had two Amazon ones this morning.
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Had to laugh.
We had a phone call, early last Sunday morning. Automated voice message purportedly from Credit Card company. Didn't get to the end and used B.T.s "block all future calls from this number facility".
Half an hour later had a text from said Credit Card asking me to ring them. I rang and sure enough there had been fraudulent activity on my card and the phone call was genuine. We're so inured to receiving fake calls that we automatically assume such a call is a scam attempt.
Had to work out how to unblock my block.😂
Fraud line very helpful but it meant getting new cards (again, for the third time in about a year).
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I think use of text messages by banks to alert potential fraud is common practice these days as so many of us distrust phone calls. Usually it’s simply a yes/no response required to a “do you recognise this transaction” type question.
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There was a report on the local news this morning about an 80+ year old who was robbed of his £80,000 life savings, after allowing remote access to his computer. Apparently they got into his online banking and transferred the money out. The trouble with these sort of reports is that they are always very thin on detail. Either there is a significant hole in internet bank security, or if my banking is anything to go by, he must have given them a lot more than remote access.
If I want to make a payment to a third party account, after inputting user codes / password and entering the code sent to my mobile, I am into the account. To set up a third party payment a code is then required from a pin sentry device into which I have to insert my bank card and enter my card pin. Even after that only £1000 can be transferred on the first day and then a maximum of 20K a day thereafter. So it would have taken 5 days to get his savings.
I find all these security hurdles very comforting and assumed that even if someone managed to access my account by some nefarious means, it would still be impossible to transfer anything out. That this might be possible is somewhat worrying.
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Like you Steve I am starting to wonder whether banks want you to us internet banking!!! Every payment I make you seem to have to jump through hoops. Now if you use your mobile phone there seems to be a lot less hassle.
I suppose a person who has accepted that the person on the other end of the phone is genuine will also be inclined to hand over a lot more details. The irony is that someone defrauded in that way is unlikely to get their money back but if the bank went bankrupt the Government would step in and support any loss up to a certain amount.
David
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i have just received a text message as follows
HSBC ALERT: A new payee request for MR G LONG has just been made on your account. if this was NOT by you visit:
And then a link was provided.
I don't have an account with HSBC and obviously didn't click on the link. I reported it to my bank and forwarded the text to 7726 which is the number for Action Fraud, the National Fraud & Cyber Crime Reporting Centre.
Take care out there!
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My OH had that on her phone too.
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