Scams come in all shapes and sizes. One of the latest is a cold telephone call telling you that your TV insurance is due for renewal. If you do have TV insurance, please make sure the caller is from your insurance company. If it is a scam, all they want is your debit or credit card number, expiry date, and the 3 numbers from the back of your card and you will probably end up with a bill that isn’t yours.
Beware also if the message is recorded. An easy way to check is to interrupt and ask a question, for example, ” May I have your name, please?” If the message just continues coming – beware! Also if you are offered an option of pressing ‘1’ to speak to someone, we recommend you cut off the caller.
Another scam is by email purporting to be from Royal Mail informing that “Your package is pending delivery due to an unpaid shipping fee of £1.55”. You are invited to click on the ‘PAY NOW’ link. Do not click on it! A clue to checking whether it is a scam or not is to look at the email address of the sender. It should be at the top of the email As the sender in this particular case was test@hcppump.co.th it is clearly a scam. Other clues that have recently come to light: there is no sender name – or even your own email address is shown as the sender. Not all scams these days end up in the Spam box even if you have a good protection system in place.
If you do get a scam email, you have 2 options. Option one is to press delete. That will get rid of the immediate problem. Option 2 is to forward the email to the government so that they can be made aware of what scams are current. Their address is report@phishing.gov.uk. You will get an acknowledgement from them. There is plenty of advice on the internet.
In the USA, artificial intelligence voice cloning scams are emerging as a problem. In 2024 the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) declared that $1.03 trillion was lost through this issue. How long before it hits the UK?
STAY SAFE.
Norman Anderson, Chairman of Todwick Neighbourhood Watch todwick.nhw621@btinternet.com
