10
Dec
2016
By Calvin at 10:32 GMT, 9 years ago
I received the following information from a chap called Sean Davern of forensic accountants firm Quartz Services UK yesterday (there’s your promo Sean!) and thought I’d pop it onto this news page as a timely reminder about online fraud.
Sean is reiterating something that’s been in the media this past week about emails being (purportedly) sent by HMRC informing people about a tax refund they’re owed. Sean is “guaranteeing absolutely” that these emails are total SCAMS!!
There’s a pretty simple reason why Sean and others know this is a scam and that’s because the HMRC DON’T SEND EMAILS AND TEXT MESSAGES ABOUT TAX REFUNDS!!!
So why do the fraudsters do it you may ask?
It’s because they know that when the subject of the message is free or owed money a few of us will go all silly like and give away stuff that we would otherwise not dream of doing. Because they send out many thousands of emails those ‘few’ add up to a large number of fish in their net. It’s also a good time of year to conduct these frauds, because Xmas often requires more money than at other times of the year.
Sean tells us that the fraudsters are after as much information about you as possible and here’s a list of the things they seek:
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On a related issue a quick glance at the collection of spam emails I’ve collected since the end of November (28 of them and thank you to Google Mail) I’ve had one from some never-heard-of-before company telling me that they owe me money for some job I’ve never done for them and yet another (about 200 so far) from Halifax about protecting the online account I don’t have with them!
Careless talk and replies to scamming emails costs lives and bank accounts. Trust your gut feelings; don’t get drawn into things that are too good to be true and keep your personal details private at all times.
More help: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/personal-security/662/identity-theft-and-fraud/
