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Scams: telephone, email, texts 2023, 2024
- Thread starter pjmburns
- Start date
Don't answer the door either, those scammers are everywhere!i am fairly safe i dont use FB and
I don't have a cellphone.
I tried to avoid getting a mobile too, but my wife and son, insisted and eventually I succumbed. It's good for podcasts, but those scammers love to try it on, by sending me random texts...
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
the only callers apart from my friend here in the sticks are JW but they are 2 brummies living local so that i dont mind they are not after me dosh I dont even have to hide behind the settee when the rent man comesDon't answer the door either, those scammers are everywhere!
I tried to avoid getting a mobile too, but my wife and son, insisted and eventually I succumbed. It's good for podcasts, but those scammers love to try it on, by sending me random texts...
Sometime during the pandemic and financial crisis a lot of vaguely charitable organisations set up free kitchens around here. There is such a thing as a free lunch.
I enjoy torturing a lot of those fake message people. I have strung out some of those "we are getting messages from your computer" people for half an hour before I got bored with it. It's their phone bill.
I enjoy torturing a lot of those fake message people. I have strung out some of those "we are getting messages from your computer" people for half an hour before I got bored with it. It's their phone bill.
Chunky AC
master brummie
My record for holding an unsolicited call on the phone is 31 minutes. The call was from a gentleman in Wembley trying to sell me vitamin supplements. Although he insisted he was not selling anything.
Most callers hang up when I ask them to hang on whilst I fetch a drink and comfy chair.
Most callers hang up when I ask them to hang on whilst I fetch a drink and comfy chair.
Serves them *** right!My husband took a call on his phone to hear that a criminal investigation had been opened against him for tax evasion, if you had heard what he said as he rang off he will be be having a case for bad language opened against him,
This is queationable as to whether or not you'd consider it a scam. Lately I've been seeing a lot of campaigns on FaceBook that want you to vote for something. Most recent are things like "Save Britains Heritage" or "Make voting fairer". You click their button and the campaign gets your email address and gets to use your name as one of their supporters. The scam comes in that they never really say what they are intending to do with this. I looked into the two mentioned and, although they have a web page, they have nothing much on it apart from slogans and comments about the state of something or other. If I was going to support something I'd want a pretty good idea what I was supporting. If you see something like this, don't click a "vote for" or "support" button until you know what they intend doing.
Chunky AC
master brummie
Agreed with the above, The only questionnaire I respond to, is from our local MP. Never, never give your e-Mail address to anyone you don’t know. Too many companies are collecting information about you through e-Mail and cookies. REJECT ALL cookies, especially the tracking ones. This information about you can be sold. Think before you click the butto.
A lot of these so called “campaigns” are clickbait, they want you to click the link therefore offer you something like supporting the just cause to do so.
Some are there just to get clicks, as this can drive up ad revenue. Others are there to capture your profile so the advertisers can organised targeted ads or gain an understanding of your political profile.
You may recall that company called Cambridge Analytica was criticised for scraping the personal profiles of millions of people without their permission.
Cambridge Analytica claimed that they could influence elections and referendums by understanding and targeting individuals.
Some are there just to get clicks, as this can drive up ad revenue. Others are there to capture your profile so the advertisers can organised targeted ads or gain an understanding of your political profile.
You may recall that company called Cambridge Analytica was criticised for scraping the personal profiles of millions of people without their permission.
Cambridge Analytica claimed that they could influence elections and referendums by understanding and targeting individuals.
One of the ways in which the Forum is currently set up is for adverts to appear randomly and, from time to time, to fill the entire screen. I'm sure that we - or, at least, all regular Forum users - have all encountered this and have become adept at immediately going to the top r.h. corner of the screen and hitting the "X" delete button, almost without thinking.
There's one advert which appears from time to time and this is a very plain image with little gobbledy-gook but at its centre has a large button which says something like CONTINUE or PROCEED. I found myself in automatic mode the other day and clicked on this confounded thing rather than the "X" - something against all my natural defensive instincts and practices. No harm done, as it happens, and the link was probably reasonably benign. But it has made me think just how easy it is to lose concentration and do something which normally one would NEVER do....
Chris
There's one advert which appears from time to time and this is a very plain image with little gobbledy-gook but at its centre has a large button which says something like CONTINUE or PROCEED. I found myself in automatic mode the other day and clicked on this confounded thing rather than the "X" - something against all my natural defensive instincts and practices. No harm done, as it happens, and the link was probably reasonably benign. But it has made me think just how easy it is to lose concentration and do something which normally one would NEVER do....
Chris
Paul Goodchild
Deleted Upon Request
Surely the Forum has some sort of duty of care to ensure that advertising appearing on its site does not contain dodgy links.
I have to assume that somewhere in the pipeline on this advert-approval thing - perhaps beyond the Forum's scope - there ARE some filters and controls to protect those exposed to the intrusion of advertising into a site like this. And that the stuff which appears is therefore essentially "safe". But the point I was making really is that it's so easy to switch off for a second and forget golden rules.
Chris
Chris
The one's I'm concerned about aren't making money on ad-sales (clickbait) they're marketing petitions and political supporters. The process relies on the fact that people react to the headline not the content. You sign up to something that says "Save this fine old building" and, maybe later, you discover you just voted for Buckingham palace to be converted to a shopping mall. Add to that FaceBook or Google have got you marked as a sucker for this sort of advertising.
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
it sure is
Richard Dye
master brummie
Unfortunately I think it is something we are all going to have to live with! Whatever we come up with they are going to get around.
I found one in my spam this morning.
The reasons could be :
no access to the building, recipient not found, etc.
In order to your address by clicking on the following link. Without your confirmation, the Parcel will be returned to the sender.
Please use the link below to correct address and pay (3.00 £) the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you.
I was invited to correct my address and to click here if I "no longer wish to receive emails from us"....just in case, I didn't pay the £3! All quite professional, other than the delivery date was 20 months ago and the standard of English in the last line above, "the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you"
Keep your eyes peeled everyone, such a message scam "it may arrive to you"....
Your package from Hermes Parcel is on its way. But Your shipment address contains an error
The delivery of your USPS shipment with waybill number madeupnumberGB! was not possible.The reasons could be :
no access to the building, recipient not found, etc.
In order to your address by clicking on the following link. Without your confirmation, the Parcel will be returned to the sender.
Please use the link below to correct address and pay (3.00 £) the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you.
I was invited to correct my address and to click here if I "no longer wish to receive emails from us"....just in case, I didn't pay the £3! All quite professional, other than the delivery date was 20 months ago and the standard of English in the last line above, "the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you"
Keep your eyes peeled everyone, such a message scam "it may arrive to you"....
that should have been a clue john as i believe its not hermes nowI found one in my spam this morning.
Your package from Hermes Parcel is on its way. But Your shipment address contains an error
The delivery of your USPS shipment with waybill number madeupnumberGB! was not possible.
The reasons could be :
no access to the building, recipient not found, etc.
In order to your address by clicking on the following link. Without your confirmation, the Parcel will be returned to the sender.
Please use the link below to correct address and pay (3.00 £) the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you.
I was invited to correct my address and to click here if I "no longer wish to receive emails from us"....just in case, I didn't pay the £3! All quite professional, other than the delivery date was 20 months ago and the standard of English in the last line above, "the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you"
Keep your eyes peeled everyone, such a message scam "it may arrive to you"....
lyn
Had a rather unusual one . Message from "Paypal" (though email address certainly not genuine) telling me that there were changes in terms and conditions (as I have received from them (and others) recently. Presumably hoping I would click on "further informstion". Looked pretty genuine except for one thing - it was addressed to my mother! Apart from her being dead for 8 years (sometimes records ar not properly updated). Even if she knew how to get a paypal account, there is no way she would ever have done so - When she was told her cheque guarantee card could now be used by itself she went to them and told them there was no way she wanted it, and asked for the facility to be removed. Cannot remember if they were able to just give her a guarantee card or not, but that was as technologically advanced facilities as she wanted
Richard Dye
master brummie
We get things like this multiple times daily, usually UPS or FedEx in the US. We ship things a couple of times per month on UPS and sign up for their tracking system, so we are always tempted to look!I found one in my spam this morning.
Your package from Hermes Parcel is on its way. But Your shipment address contains an error
The delivery of your USPS shipment with waybill number madeupnumberGB! was not possible.
The reasons could be :
no access to the building, recipient not found, etc.
In order to your address by clicking on the following link. Without your confirmation, the Parcel will be returned to the sender.
Please use the link below to correct address and pay (3.00 £) the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you.
I was invited to correct my address and to click here if I "no longer wish to receive emails from us"....just in case, I didn't pay the £3! All quite professional, other than the delivery date was 20 months ago and the standard of English in the last line above, "the fees for new delivery attempt it will arrive to you"
Keep your eyes peeled everyone, such a message scam "it may arrive to you"....
Try and resist that temptation.
wilkesworld
master brummie
Last edited:
wilkesworld
master brummie
Rule of thumb :
If you get a phone call and you don't know the number .... don't answer it !
If you get an email and there is a link to click on..... delete it.
If you get a phone call and you don't know the number .... don't answer it !
If you get an email and there is a link to click on..... delete it.
I read over the weekend that the Times science editor recently received a scam Royal Mail text explaining that a delivery had failed and clicked on it (when his mind was elsewhere), and when asked for the small delivery fee, paid it. This is what happened when he was in the process of reporting it to his bank some hours later:
I opened the app for my bank, Starling, and checked that there was nothing suspicious. There wasn’t. Then I went to the online chat on my phone app to tell them what I had done. I can still see the conversation now.
“Hello,” I said at 4.50pm on the app. “I think I’ve given a scam site my bank details.”
“Hi Thomas,” came the response 15 minutes later. “You’re through to Peter. Thanks for waiting today!”
A few minutes later, my conversation with Peter on the app stopped abruptly. The reason why is that Matt phoned.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m calling from Starling.” I picked up the call and said: “I was just on the chat.” Matt said: “We know. The hackers have access to your app and your phone.
“Can you see a pending transaction for £224?” he asked. I could, it had just popped up — awaiting my approval. “We think it is suspicious,” he said. It was indeed. I thanked him for calling, and said I felt very silly. He chuckled and said there was no need.
Then I had a niggle. “How do I know you’re not the scammer?” I asked. After all, they had my phone number. He said I was right to ask. “Let’s go through the security questions,” he said.
“Can you tell me my recent transactions?” I said.
“Not until the questions,” he replied.
So we did the dance, him saying bits of my address, me completing it. Fine, he said, you’re verified.
He had called me, he said, because the hackers had access to everything on my phone. Starling Bank needed to upgrade the app. Matt said I should change my email password because the hackers had it. When the call was over, he said, I should contact my other bank. I said “****”. He told me not to swear.
Still, though, I had a slight niggle. What he was saying didn’t make sense to me. Even if, as he said, the hackers had full access to my phone, they wouldn’t be able to just log into my banking apps — they required a thumb print. He brushed aside my worries. I didn’t understand the sophistication of the attack, he said. I checked his number, at his insistence. It was Starling’s. By this stage we had been speaking for 15 minutes. He said it was imperative I upgraded my security.
“The hackers are in your bank app now,” he said. He was calm, but authoritative. “We need to send an authentication notification under an alias. It will come from ‘Warehouse Utilities’.” When I clicked on this, he said, it would upgrade the app without the hackers knowing, and kick them out.
I didn’t really understand. I took the phone from my ear, and opened the Starling app. The notification popped up: “Warehouse Utilities”. I also saw that it required I approve a £1,000 transaction. You need to understand, I’m panicked. I’m worried I’ve compromised all my bank accounts, and all my work. Matt has warned me that the hackers could have got access to the work wi-fi. Still, my stupidity has limits. I’m not clicking on that. I said: “I’ll call you back immediately on this number.”
“There is a long wait and we can’t guarantee your funds if you do that,” he said. “They may clear you out.”
“That makes no sense, just block transactions,” I said. For the first time, he sounded flustered.
Then I asked: “What were we saying just now on the online chat?”
He said: “You were asking to verify this call.”
I wasn’t. I hung up.
Here is my attempt to reverse engineer what happened. It was, I believe, a total coincidence that the moment I realised my mistake and was on the bank’s online chat was the moment Matt called. Everything that came after was planned. His goal throughout was to sound calm and professional, while making me increasingly flustered. So much so that I didn’t notice that he was “verifying” me more than I was verifying him. He had my “security details” because — I’d autofilled my address on the “Royal Mail” page. Part of the verification involved me telling him my bank balance “to confirm it’s you”. So he knew how much I was good for. There were nice touches too. He could ad-lib — telling me not to swear was genius. This man was clever. He had options in life, but the tragedy is he chose this. Ultimately though, in this instance, his labour was for naught. I didn’t click. Instead I rang Starling — the number of which he had spoofed — and it sorted it all. After seeing how it worked, it seems obviously laughable that the bank would use an approach like his.
So what is the moral of my tale? I wonder how I would react reading this about someone else. Probably I would find the mechanism intriguing. Maybe I would warn elderly neighbours. Smugly I wouldn’t consider it an issue for me though. And yet. In that moment, when I thought someone was in all my bank accounts, all my emails, thinking the whole office might have been compromised by my idiocy? Well, I can see why people may, in a moment of madness, click.
I opened the app for my bank, Starling, and checked that there was nothing suspicious. There wasn’t. Then I went to the online chat on my phone app to tell them what I had done. I can still see the conversation now.
“Hello,” I said at 4.50pm on the app. “I think I’ve given a scam site my bank details.”
“Hi Thomas,” came the response 15 minutes later. “You’re through to Peter. Thanks for waiting today!”
A few minutes later, my conversation with Peter on the app stopped abruptly. The reason why is that Matt phoned.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m calling from Starling.” I picked up the call and said: “I was just on the chat.” Matt said: “We know. The hackers have access to your app and your phone.
“Can you see a pending transaction for £224?” he asked. I could, it had just popped up — awaiting my approval. “We think it is suspicious,” he said. It was indeed. I thanked him for calling, and said I felt very silly. He chuckled and said there was no need.
Then I had a niggle. “How do I know you’re not the scammer?” I asked. After all, they had my phone number. He said I was right to ask. “Let’s go through the security questions,” he said.
“Can you tell me my recent transactions?” I said.
“Not until the questions,” he replied.
So we did the dance, him saying bits of my address, me completing it. Fine, he said, you’re verified.
He had called me, he said, because the hackers had access to everything on my phone. Starling Bank needed to upgrade the app. Matt said I should change my email password because the hackers had it. When the call was over, he said, I should contact my other bank. I said “****”. He told me not to swear.
Still, though, I had a slight niggle. What he was saying didn’t make sense to me. Even if, as he said, the hackers had full access to my phone, they wouldn’t be able to just log into my banking apps — they required a thumb print. He brushed aside my worries. I didn’t understand the sophistication of the attack, he said. I checked his number, at his insistence. It was Starling’s. By this stage we had been speaking for 15 minutes. He said it was imperative I upgraded my security.
“The hackers are in your bank app now,” he said. He was calm, but authoritative. “We need to send an authentication notification under an alias. It will come from ‘Warehouse Utilities’.” When I clicked on this, he said, it would upgrade the app without the hackers knowing, and kick them out.
I didn’t really understand. I took the phone from my ear, and opened the Starling app. The notification popped up: “Warehouse Utilities”. I also saw that it required I approve a £1,000 transaction. You need to understand, I’m panicked. I’m worried I’ve compromised all my bank accounts, and all my work. Matt has warned me that the hackers could have got access to the work wi-fi. Still, my stupidity has limits. I’m not clicking on that. I said: “I’ll call you back immediately on this number.”
“There is a long wait and we can’t guarantee your funds if you do that,” he said. “They may clear you out.”
“That makes no sense, just block transactions,” I said. For the first time, he sounded flustered.
Then I asked: “What were we saying just now on the online chat?”
He said: “You were asking to verify this call.”
I wasn’t. I hung up.
Here is my attempt to reverse engineer what happened. It was, I believe, a total coincidence that the moment I realised my mistake and was on the bank’s online chat was the moment Matt called. Everything that came after was planned. His goal throughout was to sound calm and professional, while making me increasingly flustered. So much so that I didn’t notice that he was “verifying” me more than I was verifying him. He had my “security details” because — I’d autofilled my address on the “Royal Mail” page. Part of the verification involved me telling him my bank balance “to confirm it’s you”. So he knew how much I was good for. There were nice touches too. He could ad-lib — telling me not to swear was genius. This man was clever. He had options in life, but the tragedy is he chose this. Ultimately though, in this instance, his labour was for naught. I didn’t click. Instead I rang Starling — the number of which he had spoofed — and it sorted it all. After seeing how it worked, it seems obviously laughable that the bank would use an approach like his.
So what is the moral of my tale? I wonder how I would react reading this about someone else. Probably I would find the mechanism intriguing. Maybe I would warn elderly neighbours. Smugly I wouldn’t consider it an issue for me though. And yet. In that moment, when I thought someone was in all my bank accounts, all my emails, thinking the whole office might have been compromised by my idiocy? Well, I can see why people may, in a moment of madness, click.
