We keep reading about online fraud and think "I'm sure I won't fall for that", but unfortunately many people do.
Farther down this post is an email I received very recently. As it happens, I've just posted an item on ebay which I wish to sell, so I wasn't too surprised when I received the email below; the text is exactly as received except that I've edited my email address and the intended delivery address.
At first site it looks genuine but I knew it was a fake for the following reasons:
- I didn’t order, buy or sell this product
- I have no connection with the intended addressee
- The “From” address is gmail!
- Ebay would never address me as “[email protected]”
- They ask me to phone a landline in London if I think it’s fraudulent; ebay would never do this, and even if they wanted to follow-up, they’d ask you to fill in a form online, not to phone someone. If you do phone, you’ll probably be asked for your credit card details “so as to arrange a refund”, and then they’ll order stuff on your card. ..
- “Auto-debit” is not a valid method of payment – it suggests they will raise a direct debit (DD) against your account, and is designed to encourage you to panic and phone them to cancel the DD.
- The phrase “ Your purchase is protected by eBay-Guarantee* “ is underlined which suggests that if you click on it, it will take you to a website definition of the guarantee, but it doesn’t.
- “Ask a seller a question” is also underlined, but the link doesn’t do anything.
If you ever receive anything like this, please just forward it to the Government’s support email address
Here’s the link to an information page
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams/report-scam-email
and here’s their address: [email protected]
I’ve just sent this one to them.
BE VERY CAREFUL ONLINE
Cllr Simon Brew
