I think I've done something daft.....

My DD and I enter several hundred competitions every week but only via our desktop computer, never via mobile phone. After a while it's easy to distinguish the scams from the genuine ones and I very rarely enter my mobile no., only the landline. I also avoid ones that have small print saying your details may be passed on to third parties. We end up on a lot of mailing lists as a result but you can always unsubscribe from these and we've have never lost any money. On the other hand we've won many prizes so it's not true that you never get something for nothing.

Yes re Morrisons, I don't seem to get any £5 vouchers anymore...what's going on. These were attached to the ' and More card....! Must email them too....

I got caught with an anti wrinkle serum add, promising miracle results as usual.After the bargain price of £4.95 had been paid, I found £88.00 had been taken from my account a month later! I was annoyed with myself, as I never believe in 'miracle' cream/ serums etc, but must have had a week moment. I rang a given London number given 10 or 11 times, then found a number in California, which , desperate after reading of so many others caught , (and some of those people had been paying for two or three months without noticing it going from their account-how?) I rang. A very polite American girl told me " you signed up for this Ma'am", which yes, I had unwittingly,but only for the £4.95 I thought. That is all I got back,but at least they cancelled the sub. I looked online at a local site to the company, and their version of American trading standards were issuing dire warnings about this company scam, and wanted to hear from anyone who had had a similar experience.I still feel stupid about it, OH was very good, as he runs a business dealing with lots of people every day, and has heard many similar things-competitions, buy this miracle stuff etc. It's a hazard of modern life I think, and doh!! damn serum didn't even work ( as usual!!

Same here...Im getting lots of messages asking me to enter competitions....

Thank you, baubles!

Don't do it, Conni7!!
I'm getting about 3 emails every day now, telling me I'm in line for winning £500..... .....er, no!!

Glad you got it sorted Marelli

No Conni and I don't think they would offer £50. It must be a scam.

Does anyone keep getting emails offering a £50 Morrisons voucher? I have had several, but not opened them as they didn't seem to come from Morrisons. Am I missing out? I wouldn't mind one, as they seem to have given up on the £5 one that I used to get regularly with my bill.

If you contact Amazon they are usually very understanding. A couple of years ago I signed up for the free trial and forgot to cancel, but when I contacted them they did a quick analyses and said I didn't order enoigh to make it worthwhile and cancelled for me.

Since then I gave actually joined again as now I do order enoigh PLUS I get all sorts of free movies and TV on demand. The children's ones are especially great when GC here, and can be streamed straight into iPads, TVs, etc..

Juggernaut, that's exactly how it would have worked. It would vhave been added to my phone bill - and therefore, although I would have noticed that the bill was £18 a month more than usual, it might've slipped my memory to do anything about checking that out. It would have gone indefinitely.

Oh! Amazon Prime; if you ask for a speedy free delivery of an item you have probably signed up for it that way without realising. DH got caught but I realised and cancelled it before they took the money.

That happened to me 3 weeks ago Willow I didn't realise until I got an e-mail from them. I was able to cancel straightaway and had an e-mail confirming that. So I bought H a new electric razor and myself some Reiker sandals I had been coverting free of delivery charges and the next day.

I got caught on Amazon the other day whilst ordering something - somehow and I've no idea how I ended up signing up for Amazon Prime or so they said and I had a months trial before £79 would be taken from my account. I definitely hadn't done it - luckily I was able to log in and cancel the free trial. There are always scam mails coming out - I've had several from Apple saying my account has been suspended for unusual activity - only they've sent it to another e-mail address I've got so I know it's rubbish. Unfortunately there will always be those vulnerable enough to fall for them.

It's the ones from naughty ladies I really object to.

Polly I'm getting the same on lots of sites. It's very annoying

I got caught like this when ordering some free samples with an order using my credit card and was horrified (and ashamed of my stupidity ) to find that substantial money was being taken from my account every week.I contacted my credit card company and they were marvellous-- for every withdrawal these crooks took they were charged a large fee, and I was refunded the money. The crooks soon realised there was nothing in for them and gave up. I was so relieved and grateful.

Well, I went down to the Vodaphone store as soon as it opened this morning, and the lovely young chap said this sort of thing was becoming really common. He took my phone, fiddled about with it for a few seconds and showed me that what I'd 'signed up' for (no, I didn't!) has now been cancelled.
Guess what? Throughout the day, while I've been dashing about like the proverbial blue-a..ed fly, 2 more emails have appeared. One for Tesco and one for Aldi, both telling me that I'm being given the chance to win £500. All I have to do is click on the link........!

Not a competition, but another scam. I had an email last week claiming to be from HMRC, saying that I was entitled to a tax refund. But I would have to open a 'government gateway' account to get it. So I rang HMRC, who confirmed that they NEVER notify about refunds, rebates etc. through email. The man I spoke to commented 'They know the terms to use, don't they!' I hadn't opened any links, & forwarded the email to the HMRC phishing address.

Sounds like the sort of thing I would do Marelli.

I won't now. Thanks.

You don't even have to click on the email, Shestheone, just hover the cursor over the email address/name of whoever has sent it and you will usually see it has nothing to do with the purported sender. Sometimes friends' email accounts are hacked and you could get an email from them, do the same thing and you will see it is not their email address.

pollyp This keeps happening to me too ? It's only GN that seems to trigger it. HQ are aware and thei techie team are dealing with it ? They managed to sort it a few months back, so hopefully they'll triumph this time too!

Well I had a problem on my iPhone yesterday while looking at Gransnet! A 'pop up' appeared saying I had won an iPhone 6 and had been selected to test iPhone 7 or something like that. There was no off button just an OK which I pressed by mistake. I could not delete or get rid of it and it obscured the page I was trying to read. It also came up on every Internet site I went to. Did not affect emails or texts though.. After consulting family I went to settings and after ages (I'm not good at this) managed to switch on block pop ups and block cookies. I also deleted all history which it said would remove cookies but worried me as I thought I'd lose everything . However it seems to have worked as it's back to normal today.

The best tip is to never click on anything in an email. Go direct to the website if you need to update something. I have found the BT ones very convincing - telling me I need to update my card details.

The best tip I was given - for emails - is to click on the 'show details' button next to the sender's name. Even if the email looks genuine, and some of them are extremely clever, the address of the sender usually gives it away.

For example, I had one from Asda, but the sender's address was [email protected]!

I check this for all emails I'm a bit dubious about.