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Scams: telephone, email, texts 2023, 2024

On my wife's Facebook this morning is an advert for free rail travel for one year.
It costs £1•69 per year and all for answering a few questions.
Sounds very much like a scam to me.
Anyone else seen this on Facebook,what does the team think?


NoddKD,trying to stay safe.:worried:
 
I have seen that advert several times. I would love that option but what comes to mind immediately is the old phrase 'If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is'. There is no way that the train operators could justify a promotional scheme such as that as the principle of promos is that you will get additional business which will pay for the promo scheme. Take for instance my Senior Railcard. I have to pay for that in advance but two trips to London for me pays for that with the savings that I make. The benefit to the rail companies is that some of those trips are optional that I would not have taken had it not been for the reduction.
 
DavidGrain said:
I have seen that advert several times. I would love that option but what comes to mind immediately is the old phrase 'If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is'. There is no way that the train operators could justify a promotional scheme such as that as the principle of promos is that you will get additional business which will pay for the promo scheme. Take for instance my Senior Railcard. I have to pay for that in advance but two trips to London for me pays for that with the savings that I make. The benefit to the rail companies is that some of those trips are optional that I would not have taken had it not been for the reduction.
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Thanks for the prompt reply David. You echo my thoughts which I shall pass onto she who must be obeyed.
 
I get a suspicious scam here, that you may get in reverse. Obvious as a scam, and gets deleted, but suspicious when it turns up. Sometimes when I order from Amazon, the article will come from the UK, even though I order on the French site and pay in euro. Using the normal tracking system I can see the item leave the UK (usually Rochester in Kent) and head for Europe. There will be customs formalities, either in Belgium or France, then it will follow the normal route to my place. While the item is in customs, (this morning for instance), I get an SMS telling me that a parcel is awaiting customs payment, with a web site to contact to make the payment. Often the website has DHL buried in the gobbledegook to give it a legitimate look. Amazon look after the delivery end to end transparently for me, it doesn't matter which warehouse it comes out of.
Somewhere, someone is noting parcels going though customs, and making a sideline out of scamming. Amazon parcels have a contact number on the label in case the final deliverer needs to ask which bit of the sticks I am in, and this is getting noted. Each time the SMS is from a different French mobile number. I may just be incentivised enough to tell Amazon that it is happening, but it is 43 C here today and we are hiding under a rock.
Andrew.
 
Janet Hunt said:
I keep receiving calls from area codes where I do not know anyone, Had one from Bodmin, Ballymena, Leicester in the last 5 days. I simply do not answer and just block the number. Curious though I may answer the next one.
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They are a bit sly here. Numbers are 'massaged' (too easy to do), to look like they come from your own code, on the basis that you are more likely to respond to someone local.
Andrew.
 
I had an attempted text scam the other day I thought I would share with you. I have to admit, it did make me think for a few moments, most scams have an element of plausibility in them. I decided to do a bit of scam baiting while I reported it to 7726.

Text-Scam.jpg
 
true Richard a bit slow in developing is right by the looks of the sms.... as to Any sugestions? yer stop trying to con hard WORKING folks
 
Like you and everyone else l get so many scam calls, they usually start around 3.00pm untill 8'00,pm a few days ago l decided to go along with what they were pushing, they all have a foreign twang ( which is very hard to decipher) well they had a plan of somesort and asked my age ....when l told them they said they were sorry but l did not qualify...so in future just tell them your over 85 and you might get taken the list
 
brenda barr said:
Like you and everyone else l get so many scam calls, they usually start around 3.00pm untill 8'00,pm a few days ago l decided to go along with what they were pushing, they all have a foreign twang ( which is very hard to decipher) well they had a plan of somesort and asked my age ....when l told them they said they were sorry but l did not qualify...so in future just tell them your over 85 and you might get taken the list
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Brenda, if they were sorry they would not have been doing that!
 
I agree 100% Richard, as Elton John once sang, "Sorry seems to be the hardest word" for these low life criminals. It is nothing short of telephone robbery, but like the vast majority of burglaries today, the culprits are rarely apprehended and the will to try to try to do so, is sadly lacking.
 
Not a scam but an actual burglary, one of my motor trade friends said he woke up thinking there was someone in the house, got up and was confronted by a burglar, he realised he hadn't put on any clothes so was standing there naked, reached out for a decorative sword from above the fireplace and stood there like some naked palace guard with the sword pointing up. Instead of backing off the burglar moved towards him, shocked he started to move back but his arm went up and the sword went up the burglars nose splitting it top to bottom.
The burglar turned and ran and nothing more was ever seen or heard from him.
 
Not really a scam or unwanted telephone call but I had a visit years ago who it seems was selling an encyclopedia but this was coupled with insurance. I listened patiently but having a good memory remembered his words about people who were unable to join. I has some copies of Russian newspapers on the table brought back from St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, so I told him I was a Communist. He was off like a shot. A white lie, as I have never been a Communist, but it had the desired result.
 
i remember having a phone call from some woman asking about a accident i had she just kept woffling on asking was you hurt a bit anywere you can claim millions etc. i started coughing and the cheeky so and so told me to stop coughing down her ear. i shouted go away very load and hung up:(
 
Eric Gibson said:
Not a scam but an actual burglary, one of my motor trade friends said he woke up thinking there was someone in the house, got up and was confronted by a burglar, he realised he hadn't put on any clothes so was standing there naked, reached out for a decorative sword from above the fireplace and stood there like some naked palace guard with the sword pointing up. Instead of backing off the burglar moved towards him, shocked he started to move back but his arm went up and the sword went up the burglars nose splitting it top to bottom.
The burglar turned and ran and nothing more was ever seen or heard from him.
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Good for your friend! A little scary though.
 
I had one several years ago from a cold caller (they used to be called ambulance chasers, I think) claiming that I may be able to make a claim for hearing loss due to having worked in a noisy workplace. As a former office worker, I thought that very unlikely, so I cut the call short, but before hanging up teased the caller into thinking she might have a prospective gullible client on the line by saying, "I'm sorry, I can't make out a word of what you have just said, I worked for 40 years at a blast furnace, so my hearing is not what it once was". ;)
 
Brummie a long time ago said:
They are a bit sly here. Numbers are 'massaged' (too easy to do), to look like they come from your own code, on the basis that you are more likely to respond to someone local.
Andrew.
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Yes, spoofing caller ID to a local number caused me to answer a scam call. Guy calling (heavily accented) said he was from BT Openreach & that there was a problem with internet in the area. Wanted me to run BT Wholesale Speed test. When I told him that I didn't have a computer wired to my modem/ router he told me to run it on my 'phone. I pointed out that the Speed test website specifically states that you have to use a wired connection and asked him if he really did work for BT. He became quite upset and offensive
 
One of the commonest scams is known as Advance Fee fraud. These are the emails you sometimes get promising that if you send someone money (usually to pay for some kind of administrative work) you will receive millions in return. For some reason, most of these scams originate in Nigeria where they are referred to as 419 scams, from the law that these scammers are prosecuted under. Over time, a kind of online sport has grown whereby people bait these scammers by entering into correspondence with them acting as if they were going to send them money, procrastinating and playing them like fish simply to waste their time and annoy them. These wind ups can go on for months, often involving dozens of emails and the results can be very funny. The most skilful of these “Scambaiters” as they are known have gone on to create YouTube channels where they enter into telephone conversations, with bizarre and often hysterical results. The best Scambait channel of all in my opinion in Scambait Central, whose creator calls himself Mr Pricky Queerhouse in correspondence with scammers, and works with others to drive these scammers mad. He never reveals he is winding them up as they would learn how to make themselves more believable.
The following link is to one of his calls. WARNING: Do NOT watch if easily offended
 
Godber said:
One of the commonest scams is known as Advance Fee fraud. These are the emails you sometimes get promising that if you send someone money (usually to pay for some kind of administrative work) you will receive millions in return. For some reason, most of these scams originate in Nigeria where they are referred to as 419 scams, from the law that these scammers are prosecuted under. Over time, a kind of online sport has grown whereby people bait these scammers by entering into correspondence with them acting as if they were going to send them money, procrastinating and playing them like fish simply to waste their time and annoy them. These wind ups can go on for months, often involving dozens of emails and the results can be very funny. The most skilful of these “Scambaiters” as they are known have gone on to create YouTube channels where they enter into telephone conversations, with bizarre and often hysterical results. The best Scambait channel of all in my opinion in Scambait Central, whose creator calls himself Mr Pricky Queerhouse in correspondence with scammers, and works with others to drive these scammers mad. He never reveals he is winding them up as they would learn how to make themselves more believable.
The following link is to one of his calls. WARNING: Do NOT watch if easily offended
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One of the reasons for Nigeria is because it is very difficult to do background checks there and many countries in that region.
I am advising a company facilitating sites in the US India and Vietnam (who are ver westernized honorable). We have lots of interest from Ghana, Indonesia etc, but they all want the piece before you start. It’s what’s yours is theirs and what there’s is theirs!
 
Something I've seen lately on Facebook was a shared link to what seems to be a bitcoin seller disguised as a page from the Mirror. I reported it to Facebook, thinking the faked newspaper page alone would trip their alarms but they say it's OK. I notice that FB doesn't seem to take notice of this if it's something in a link i.e the scam is somewhere outside of their site.
 
Unfortunately, Facebook is full of scams which they don’t seem to take very seriously. I am seeing a lot of scammers selling vans and cars that are exceptionally cheap. Most of us know that if its too good to be true, it is. Yet people are still falling for it.
 
Golden rules:-
1) If "its too good to be true" it almost certainly is
2) There is no such thing as a "free lunch"
3) If a call starts with "I'm not trying to sell you anything" then they are
4) If you get a call from "your broadband provider" its a scam
5) If "the offer will expire today" let it and walk away from it
6) If the caller's English is that bad even they do not know what they are saying hang up
7) If the caller just happens to be "in your area" actively encourage them to move to another area
8) If the caller "needs to talk to you" they do, but you do not need to listen to them
9) Certain legitimate companies (I could list a few including a well known mobile phone provider and a roofing contractor from Wolverhampton, but would probably be breaking forum rules....) will never ever ever ever ever take no for an answer so if they call you just hang up
10) If your Amazon Prime account did not auto-renew even though it was not expired and you had cash in the bank do not panic
11) When the card on the bank account you do not have has been compromised do not panic

Please feel free to add to this list folks!!!
 
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