Some scams to be aware of this month –
- A couple of postal scams that have been received by Island residents – the first from the Peoples Postcode Lottery, if you receive one of these AND you have bought a ticket then research the genuine contact details for the lottery and contact them independently. The second purports to be an ex-employee of a Ukraine Government Agency who has access to “spare Government funds” and wants to share it with the recipient! This is clearly a SCAM – don’t respond or engage in both cases you will end up losing money – not gaining it
- Be very cautious if you experience problems with a laptop or computer freezing and then messages appearing advising you to call a help line – DON’T this will be scammers who will take your money and have caused the problem in the first case. If you have any issues like this take your device to a reputable computer repair company who will be able to “clean” your device and ensure it is safe for you to use.
- Apparently Elon Musk has some Tesla cars to give away and recipients of an email will be able to respond to claim their freebie – DON’T this is clearly a SCAM. Elon Musk would never contact random emails with such an offer this is scammers who will try to obtain payment for shipping or taxes that they claim will be due before your car can be sent!
- Somebody has reported that they received a scam call claiming that a ticket had been purchased for them for a journey, via her bank and was given options to press. This is likely to be a “refund” scam whereby you know nothing about so they offer to refund the money to your bank account – gleaning all your details and potentially your money
- Repeated calls being reported claiming to be from medical emergency buttons. Never engage with one of these calls – the systems wont work and you may find yourself paying a monthly fee that you are unable to cancel. If you feel that you or a loved one would benefit from one of these systems please do your own research and find a reliable company
- If you receive an email purporting to be from somebody you know asking for help treat it with caution, it is highly likely that your friends email address has been hacked and scammers will be using their details to gain money from everyone in their address book. The best thing you can do is phone your friend and ask if they are ok, they will know nothing about it so can then take action to ensure that their account is safe
When you report a suspicious email to report@phishing.gov.uk the automatic reply gives you some interesting statistics and shows how important it is to report scams. As of June 2024 –
Reports received – 32,897,230 with the removal of more than 184,500 scams across 337,672 URL’s
Aug
20
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