Nasty !

MichaelG.

P.S. __ this might be a good place to mention

Fraud Protection Line is 159 … this will give a choice of Banks

Very nasty!  This is a power-assisted scam, one supported by data gathering.  The baddies have somehow collected enough information to target a specific victim with nearly enough data to make it convincing.

It’s important when using the web to minimise information leakage by blocking trackers and cookies, avoiding dodgy websites, and not providing personal information of any kind unless essential.  (A friend cannot comprehend this: in his mind, no-one is interested in little him.  They are! )

Also important to remain alert just as Chris did.  Necessary because legitimate businesses get hacked, employee are bribed to copy information to criminals, and Slack-Alice disposes of old computers without destroying the discs.

No bank deals with a security alert by ringing the customer and asking them to do anything.   They freeze accounts without contacting the customer and have no need to send a barrage of texts and phone calls asking customers to call an 0800 number.

Be-aware that many in the 0800 series, such as 0870, are premium rate, not free.  That may be the scam – getting the victim to make a long-winded call that costs him a bomb, whilst they try to get the victim to transfer money to a ‘safe’ account that belongs to them.

Most banks have a 24×7 security hotline, so no need to wait for normal business hours.   The Nationwide Building Society are on 0800 0556622. “Call us straight away if you think someone might have access to your money.”

The majority of scams are too ill-informed to catch many.   What Chris and his wife got was much more dangerous – in the heat of the moment, the somewhat convincing details might have panicked them into the trap.  Well done for staying calm, and I advise anyone else on the receiving end to start by making a cup-of-tea, letting the adrenalin subside, and then contacting their bank.

Dave

It is extremely disconcerting to see just how much individual information is obtained by (presumably) the use of A.I. and other techniques by the scammers.

One of the recent scam mails I received could be very convincing if it were not for the obvious errors: the e-mail started off by explaining that they had evidence of my use of a Samsung Galaxy [model number] mobile ‘phone on which they had seen that I had frequently viewed a popular pornographic site with “particularly piquant” content which showed how interested I was in this kind of pornography! It went on to say that they could send all of this personal content, accompanied by a video of myself [playing with myself] that was taken by the ‘phone camera while watching the porn videos to my wife Irene, all my friends, family and other contacts, but I could avoid this if I paid a sum (in “bitcoin crypto”) to them on a bitcoin (account) number before Friday 27th June. It contained dates, times, and (surprisingly) places that they said came from the GPS location data from the ‘phone.

Now, I can imagine that a few people just might use a mobile ‘phone to view such material and be scared sh witless by the presumed threat but I am not one of them… however that isn’t the reason that I personally have no worries!

Firstly I don’t even use the ‘phone to browse the Web (I’ll use a computer), secondly I hardly ever actually take the ‘phone with me (so definitely not to the places quoted!), thirdly the e-mail was sent on Wednesday 2nd July(!), and fourthly unless my wife has secretly changed her name via deed poll then it is not “Irene” but does indeed begin with the letter “I”.

Quite apart from that, whilst I have seen a couple of pornographic websites, they were full of code that could be hacking or otherwise seriously compromising the operating system of the computer and I therefore avoid them like the plague; my point here is that there is an alarmingly increasing number of apparently very realistic and (again, apparently) personally-directed scams that can arrive via mail, texts and messages – written in far better English than used to be the case (and that also applies to good Dutch language since I reside in the Netherlands and am fluent in it).

The lesson has to be that in these times of ‘easier, faster communication’ we have to take more and more care and examine incoming mail or texts etc. and check with real people at such places as banks, stores etc. before making decisions or taking actions. What does not help is the fact that many such companies are making more use of (A.I.-based) automatic answering devices both for the telephone and for their online responses (i.e. e-mail responses and ‘chat-assistants’).

We can all blame the technology and the way it is advancing so quickly: however we could (and did) blame the telephone, the motor car, the television etc. for all kinds of ills. It is not technology that is at fault, it is human abuse of that technology.