Scams

Movedalot

Did your husband repair computers?.
I have a friend who repairs them but he says he does not know much about using them.

Frank

A strange thing happened once. Somebody got in to my e mail address and sent e mails to people saying things like I had accepted their dinner invitation.
Some of these people were in places like Glasgow, Cardiff, Dublin and the USA.
I changed my password which stopped these e mails being sent but I got about 50 replies over 3 months.
I had to send e mails to these people explaining the e mails were a hoax and it wasted a lot of time when I was working.
Even after realising this I have got an invite for dinner in Dublin which I have not taken up.

Frank

I only get a very rarely get one in my inbox which means I tend to open them which I never do in the junk box, which I empty every day after marking the ones which are phishing scams.

What do you mean, Moved, by 'your inbox rather than junk mail'? I very rarely look in the junk mail, but your service provider can't filter them all out so some end up in my ordinary email inbox.

It is more worrying when it comes into your inbox rather than junk mail. This morning DH had one telling him he had paid £96 to skype via Paypal and if he disputed the payment he should click a link. I heard him shout abuse and went to see what the problem was. Told him not to click the link but to go directly to his Paypal account. Surprise, surprise he had nothing in there. He thought it was real because it was in his man mailbox and would have clicked the link if I hadn't stopped him. He was in IT for most of his working life!

Try changing the password you use to get on to your e-mail account. It worked for me when I was getting one hoax e-mail regularly but that's no guarantee it will work for other e-mails.

We are in France at the moment and received an email from EDF the state electricity supplier asking us to contact them immediately as our last electricity direct debit had been returned by our bank, unpaid. Please cliquez ici immediatement. We were pretty sure it was a scam as the payment was shown on our bank statement, but the next meter reading is due around now with payment in early April.

Not feeling up to ringing EDF and have a phone conversation, we went down to the bank with bill, bank statement and laptop and showed the email. The bank manager was very helpful, checked everything online and said there had been no direct debit activation or refusal since the last bill we had received.

We have no difficulty dealing with these things in the UK but in another country with different law, company email conventions and adequate French but not enough to notice those usual scam telltails, garbled and ungrammatical language one feels much more vulnerable and we didn't want to return to England and then return to France 5 weeks later and find the electricity has been cut off because the bill hasn't been paid.

I just click on the phishing scam button and hopefully they get reported that way.

Frank

Ihope you have reprted these to the bank, Frank to help them to crack down on scams and fraud?

Flowerofthewest

I have just had another 2 e mails one supposedly from my bank and the time on it is 9.20 saying my access is suspended.
I find that a little strange as I looked at my bank account on the internet less than 15 minutes ago.
I just wonder who falls for these scams.
If you think it could be genuine just try to sign in to your account.
I was a little surprised to get the e mail a few days ago saying my overdraft facility had been cancelled.
As it was not asking for details to be entered I think it was a hoax rather than a scam but why?.
Somebody went to a lot of trouble.

Frank

Amazing Frank, I had similar emails. I,apparently, had half a dozen accounts suspended and I have been with only one bank for over 25 years! I love the delete button