People across Gedling borough are being urged to be careful as more new scams emerge.
Action Fraud, Which? and Nottinghamshire County Council Trading Standards constantly issue scam warnings to make people aware of the latest attempts by fraudsters to get them to part with their cash or personal details.
Here are the most recent scam warnings it has issued to people across the borough.
Parking fine text scam
A new scam text about an unpaid parking fine is doing the rounds and leads to a copycat government website.
The text from a random number tells you: ‘an unpaid parking fine was found on your vehicle,’ and that you need to ‘pay immediately.’
It includes a dodgy link hosted by ‘qrco.de’, which is a QR code generator.
Reporters from Which? magazine put random characters into the ‘vehicle registration’ box and each time where given a bogus PCN (penalty charge) number and told they owed a £25 fine.
After this page, you’re asked for more personal and payment data including your name, email, phone number and home address to pay the fine.
The only sign indicating that this website was fraudulent was the URL. All official government pages start with gov.uk.
You can report scam websites to the National Cyber Security Centre and texts can be forwarded to 7726.
NatWest credit card email scam
A scam email claiming to be from NatWest is being circulated and tells you that your ‘NatWest credit card account’ hasn’t been updated and that you will lose access to your account in 48 hours.
To stop this, the email provides a malicious link to ‘update’ your account.
Scam callers claiming to be from BT and Virgin Media
Which? have posted an alert following recent reports on Who Called Me about scam callers claiming to be from BT or Virgin Media.
Callers ask the recipient for information about their internet routers and others said they were calling to talk about issues with their internet connection.
The scam callers then come up with reasons to get your personal and financial details.
You can report scam calls by forwarding the number to 7726.
Microsoft malware email scam
An email claiming to be from Microsoft customer services claims that the tech giant has received ’62 complaints about your email account from Google Drive.’
It then claims your account has been spreading malware and viruses via spam emails sent from your email address.
It includes a link to ‘run and scan for viruses.’ However, this leads to a malicious site that will either download malware to your device or take you to a phishing website.
I had two men on my drive yesterday, in Arnold, the 10th., and only 2 – 3 hours after a genuine company had re-surfaced it, saying that they couldn’t come to complete the job because their van had broken down and would I give some money to get it going again and if I did ‘the boys’ could be here tomorrow. That raised my suspicions and, to cut a longer story short, when I said no, I’m not giving you any money because you’re con – men, one of them became slightly more intimidating saying ‘I’m not a con – man, I’m a working man’.
I told them to clear off, although in words less polite than ‘clear off’.
I reported it to Notts. police afterwards and will tell the genuine company today.