Vocal Voices

You owe me 441.46 do you.... and all you want is for me to create a Government Gateway @http:// industrialt. ru /vic/ and the postmaster @ lafayettesheriff.com will send the money to my account. What, all I have to do is provide my account and card details?

No problem sir, here they are, and thank you so much. I think that I can find plenty of ways to spend such money. I might even donate some to your good self. Just send me details of your account and debit card and don't forget to confirm your PIN and security code.... it's the three numbers on the signature strip on the back.

Pardon? I appear to have emptied your account rather than putting money in! Ah well, never mind, maybe next time.

Or not.

It's an active SCAM folks, please just delete the email if you get it. Details below.

From: HM Revenue & Customs Subject: Income Payment Return

Thanks for that info, Frank.

It's about time the police did something about theses types of scams.

We keep getting phone calls to say our BT connection will fail if we don't press 1 on our key pad.

Have not done this and yet we are still connected.
Dialling 1471, it is a long number probably from India or some other country.

Not had the HMRC scam email

Thanks for that WM. We get exactly the same call Cruiser. "Hello, this is internet provider" goes on to say we will be cut off, at which point I put the phone down. We're thinking of getting rid of the land line because of stuff like that.

Cruiser, Cromwell, anyone... those scam phone calls.

The government has tried and tried to ban them, but with little effect especially when they are from the sub-continent or S.E. Asia, and getting broadband deals without a phone line is almost impossible, and / or expensive, because most of us get it via ADSL or to you and me, the old phone line.

However, most of us now use our mobiles 99.99% of the time for calls so there is a quick and easy solution - no tech required. Go to the wall where your phone and broadband gets in to the house and there you will find a splitter with phone at one side and broadband the other. Simply unplug the phone, the flat white connector, and it's job done. You can always plug it back in for those calls to where you know that you will be on hold listening to Greensleeves or Motorhead for 30 minutes e.g. the council.

Aggers and everyone, as I said earlier most of them originate overseas and hide behind layers of spoofed addresses, so security is largely down to us. Just follow a few simple rules:

1. If you do not recognise the sender just delete. Simply opening lets them know your email is live, and that info can be sold on to others of their kind
2. If you think it might be from some organisation because you signed up to, say, an insurance or travel search company then do not click on any link - ever.
3. Always have your status bar visible so that when you hover over a link it tells you what the link is. It might say xyz customer services when it is actually wewantyourmoney.ru
4. If you really do want to get to a site then open a new tab and type in a known address - google really is your friend in this case, or simply go via the search results.

It is relatively easy to stay safe(r) using a few simple rules and they are worth mentioning over and over.

We don't get a lot of scam phone calls - BT's monitoring system and the Telephone Preference Service must be catching most of them.

These days, we get few incoming telephone calls anyway - our default technique during the daytime is to not answer them - if they don't leave a message we check the number on 1471; if we recognise it, we phone back on the mobile for free, if not, we check the number out using Google to see if it's one being generally complained about. If it's persistent and a UK number, we can then block it via BT.

Neither do we leave the mobile phone on. I know I have missed at least a dozen calls this year from my service provider trying to sell me a new contract ….