The Big Book of Little Scams

Or it might have been called ‘The Little Book of Big Scams’ which I picked up from a bank…I forget. The point is scamming (especially online) is a growth industry, so it’s not a bad idea to refresh your knowledge once in a while – there’s always something you can learn!

Things I already knew

The obvious stuff really:

• Banking: Never reveal your PIN / if contacted by ‘the bank’, always call back on the official number from a different phone line
• Online payments: Book with a credit card – it protects you under the Consumer Credit Act [see ‘Things I sort of knew’ below]
• Online: use antivirus software
• Text: Do not respond to any unsolicited texts, even to ‘STOP’ texts
• Website clickthroughs: always log on directly rather than clicking on links in an email; e.g. I recently received a load of bogus invoices from Apple for itunes, directing me to click on a link if I thought the invoice was wrong……but click through page (which requested bank details to recredit amounts) was not Apple

Things I ‘sort of’ knew

• Beware of ringing suggested numbers: anything beginning 0906 is a premium number, although you shouldn’t rely upon the appearance of a number to tell you what sort of number it is; e.g. 0208 isn’t necessarily a London number
• Consumer Credit Act: section 75 protects you for anything purchased on a credit card (not a debit card though) for between £100 – £30,000 – very useful details on Which
• A secure payment page: has a padlock icon in the browser and the web address always starts ‘https:/’, with the ‘s’ standing for ‘secure’

Things I did not know

Organisations to contact over spam/junk mail or calls

• The Mailing Preference Service (MPS): www.mpsonline.org.uk or tel 0207 2913300 – to remove your name from mailing lists used by the industry [note: it will take up to 4 months for the service to have full effect]
• The Opt Out Service (for Royal Mail): e-mail optout@royalmail.com, tel 08457 950950 – to opt out from receiving Door to Door unaddressed mail delivered by Royal Mail
• Opt Out (other than Royal Mail): e-mail: yourchoice@dma.org.uk, tel 020 7291 3300 –  to opt out from receiving Door to Door unaddressed mail delivered by other unaddressed mail distributors
• The Telephone Preference Service (TPS): www.tpsonline.org.uk, tel 0800 398893 – the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls

Terms:

• Phishing – unsolicited email requesting personal details (OK, I did know this, but it’s better presented in context!)
• Vishing – voice over cold calling requesting personal details
• Spear Phishing – scam focused upon an individual or department within an organisation addressed to someone within the company in a position of trust; e.g. FD, who is away on urgent business and can’t transfer certain monies….etc

Reporting

• Fraud: www.actionfraud.police.uk, tel 0300 1232040 – if you’ve been the victim of a financial fraud

Opting out

• Electoral rolls – tick a box to ‘opt out’ of the ‘Edited’ register = prevents unsolicited marketing mail