New scam alert!

[kevin b]

Posted by Andy Joyce on 06/11/2020 17:34:35:

Posted by Engine Doctor on 06/11/2020 17:14:39:

I always press 1 and if your lucky you get to speak to such nice people in India. Apparently I was lucky that engineers are working to repair my internet but being rather deaf and old (at least on the phone) I can never understand what they ask you to do with the computer. Lots of fun though and I just hope they have to pay for the phone call.

I always answer the phone by saying "hello". If it is a cold call it depends what mood I'm in. If I am busy I will tell them it is an ex directory line and don't accept these calls (they usually go away). If I am not busy I might just "converse" for a while. Usually being very polite and friendly. After a while I inform them that I don't normally answer the phone, because I am not allowed to and do they want to speak to "one of them ?". The caller either puts the phone down, or says yes. In which case I put the phone on the table and go off and leave it for a (long) while.

[Peter Miller]

I had a wonderful Email today. Apparently I have given a guaranteed payment of 1030000$.

All I have to do is fill in the form!!!

Personally I would prefer to fill in the sender.

Edited By Peter Miller on 06/11/2020 18:17:44

[John Privett]

Posted by Andrew Price 2 on 06/11/2020 14:42:57:

Actually John 06 is Hungary and 061 is Oz acording to Google

Possible, but I think unlikely for a few reasons;

• All international calls I've received so far display on my phone with a 00 prefix. So this should have appeared as 006135005428.
• Numbers in Hungary have only 8 digits, including the area code. So there are too many digits after the '06' in the number I saw displayed. Additionally the '06' is only dialled in Hungary to make calls to other parts of Hungary - from elsewhere the international code is +36
• Australian numbers have a one-digit area code and an 8-digit number. Add the '061' and that's 12 digits - one more than displayed.

It is easy for a scammer to present almost any number they want to as a caller id. Often UK numbers that look authentic at a quick glance are used, but with 1 digit too many or too few.

[John Privett]

Posted by Michael Kulagin on 06/11/2020 16:31:07:

The second was a recorded message from 020 7365 8745 advising me that I had been reported for tax fraud and, before my arrest, invited me to 'press 1' to get the matter sorted. This got ignored as well. It may just be a co-incidence but, now we are in a second lockdown, the scammers are working very hard. Be extra careful folks.

I had one of those too, yesterday. Just after 1pm, from (allegedly!) 020 3766 1347. Apparently I'm going to be arrested too!

[Cuban8]

Posted by Chris Walby on 06/11/2020 14:10:54:

C8, glad its sorted for you. Years ago I got a parking ticket, about 5:30 pm in London, so I wrote back explaining my employer would vouch for me up to 5:00 pm and if they could find a route across most of London and then get a parking ticket inside 30 minutes to please let me know. They replied and said there was an admin error

Blow me...about 3 weeks later I saw the same make, model and colour car with a registration plate one digit out (WPP528S)...I didn't think they were meant to sequentially register the same make, model and colour car.

Thanks Chris. This all involved my motorbike, so I did an on-line search for my registration number and found a whole sequence of numbers that were issued by the main dealer to twenty or so similar new machines that they sold at the same time as mine. My registration ends in NM, so my guess is that it was confused with NN which thankfully I know is quite a differently styled and colour  machine of the same make. Anyway, all's well that ends well, but a salutary tale of how one can get mixed up in something by mistake without it being a scam.

Edited By Cuban8 on 07/11/2020 09:50:05

[Peter Miller]

I have just had a phone call.When I answered allI got was a sort of jangly mess of notes. No words nothing except the mess of notes.

Any ideas what it was?

[Keith Berriman]

Over last week I kept getting calls from 01733 ****** letting it ring it would change to International

Code 01733 supposedly Peterborough

Checking on the web it is a scamming call

[Gary Manuel]

Posted by Peter Miller on 09/11/2020 19:01:08:

I have just had a phone call.When I answered allI got was a sort of jangly mess of notes. No words nothing except the mess of notes.

Any ideas what it was?

Sounds like a fax machine.

Edited By Gary Manuel on 09/11/2020 21:10:03

[SIMON CRAGG]

Had most of these over the last few weeks.

Another one that cropped up on e.mail was "Your vehicle road tax has expired" blah blah blah.

Just checked on line to be sure I was ok.

Never ending plethora of garbage!.

[Andy Stephenson]

These junk calls come from some sort of call centre where the system dials out several numbers at once and the one that is answered the soonest is put through to their "operator" all the other calls are left still ringing at their destinations and are ignored as the "operator" is now busy. If you think about it, the scammers don't care how many people are irritated by "silent" calls, they just want to keep their employees on the line for the highest proportion of the time to scam the most money they can for the least outlay.

Edited By Andy Stephenson on 10/11/2020 00:44:58

Edited By Andy Stephenson on 10/11/2020 00:46:01

[Brian Cooper]

I have just had an email supposedly from Google to inform me that "Someone knows my password".

They asked me to click on their link so I could login and change it.

For a change, the English was actually very good. Be careful out there.

[Cuban8]

Had a long chat on the phone last night with an old friend who is a professional driver. Over the last twenty years he's been the innocent subject of numerous attempted scams and frauds on the road perpetrated by the 'cash for crash and the whiplash' brigade. None have been successful because of the cameras and data loggers that he uses in his vehicles and on one occasion led to the evidence that the police needed to break up a notorious organised gang who made a good living from insurance fraud. Apparently, London is the ground zero for fraudsters on push bikes who target small commercial vehicles by deliberately staging an incident and then claiming damages etc.

On one occasion in central London, my friend had a cyclist deliberately throw themselves over his bonnet and then claim all sorts of injuries, shock - the usual rubbish. No dice, because of the camera evidence that showed my friend's car stationary at the time and the 'victim' more or less climbing on to the front of his vehicle!

I've been meaning to get a dashcam for a while - won't put it off any more.

Edited By Cuban8 on 10/11/2020 09:55:05

[Peter Miller]

I have had a dashcam for years.

Bought it originally because the mothers leaving the school in the morning come into the lane on the wrong side of the road and texting or phoning someone.

Many years ago I had so many of them walking out gabbling away or pulling out from the school without looking that I fitted my Reliant with a pair of powerful wind tones. They didn't just stop the parents. They picked them up and put them back on the pavement!!

[Jeffrey Cottrell 2]

Hi Guys

One more to add to the list.

For some days now I have been getting e-mails from someone pretending to be from Norton Antivirus.

These were telling me that my subscription was about to expire, or had expired or my pc was infected with dangerous viruses.

News to me, since I have never had Norton products.

Anyway, just to be sure I did a Live Chat with Norton direct, who confirmed this was a scam, as if I didn't know that already.

As had been noted elsewhere, the clincher on this was the e-mail address of the sender. As expected this was prefaced with 'Norton License Renewal' but the actual e-mail address was '[email protected]'.

If that's not obviously bogus, I don't know what is.

So, deleted these as soon as they arrived. Still coming, but they'll get the message eventually.

Cheers

Jeff

[Geoff Copping]

My wife played a cracker this afternoon.

She got a phone call regarding the recent road accident she'd been in. Without missing a beat my wife replied

"0h yes!! That one, it's too traumatic, I don't want to talk about it but thanks for your concern!!" and then rang off.

[Andy Stephenson]

The other one to do if you are into amateur dramatics is to get hysterical when they tell you there's been an accident by saying something like "I lent by son my car, Oh! is he injured which hospital is he in" followed by some screaming and moaning. Then without letting them get a word in say whilst hyperventilating "where did it happen was there anyone else in the car with him and are the police involved, Oh my God what can I do, did they find the drugs?" And watch everyone around you collapse into fits of laughter.

[Andy J]

Well if we can all spot spam why cant the email providers not do the same and send it straight back to the sender?

Strikes me that the police, Government and banks etc are not interested in financial fraud unless the money lost is coming out of their pockets.

[FlyinFlynn]

Not for me thanks Andy..I would rather make my own decisions about censoring my incoming emails.

[John Tee]

Had three emails from Tesco with competition offers for money prizes and one from Amazon with a offer to crack an egg on screen for prizes. Emails came from Milquakee Wisconsin USA. A bit suspicious.

John

[Brian Dorricott 1]

Just another one for the Norton renewal scam , I must have deleted dozens across several accounts lately . Nearly had me until I remembered I was with Macfee !

[Peter Miller]

I just had my regular(once every few months) call,"Your service contract on your washing machine has expired. Would you like to renew it?

Which drew my standard response. "I should blinking well think it has expired!!! IT expired 20 years ago!!!"

I should like to say that my Indisit washing machine was a great buy and still works well. If I HAD been paying for an extended guarentee I would have wasted an awful lot of money over the years!!!

[Ronaldo]

I agree Peter. Usually our family washing machines last from 5 to 6 years. Then when they fail we just go buy a new one which so far have cost £275 to around £325. If we had taken out a warranty, the cost of it would have bought 2 or 3 new machines in that time period. So now even if we're unlucky and one machine should only last 2 to 3 years, we are still in front cash wise

[Peter Miller]

MIne last a long time because I live on my own so I can save up for a big wash but even so, it is a great machine

[Keith Berriman]

Just had one from DPD parcel delivery company advising missed deliverys which were free and now need to click on a link to pay for attempted delivery again

I am on medical lock down so never saw anyone trying to make a delivery at their  stated time

Edited By Keith Berriman on 28/11/2020 14:13:00

[Doctor Chinnery]

Me too Keith - in similar situation (paranoid self-shielder in my case) - got message before lunch and immediately smelled a rat - two ways into my place, both gates were open and both of us at home all morning (like practically every day since March) and nary a sniff of a DPD van When I started to look at the message I was greeted with a red screen and a security warning so I immediately dumped it without further ado. Checking email on my iPad (synchronised with my iPhone) I caught the briefest glimpse of the fake DPD message before it disappeared into the ether. ThankYou Apple, it was apparently an attempt to install malware, but their software intervened.