Scammers are forever coming up with new and ingenious ways to get their hands on your cash, and it's fair to say, they haven't let us down with these beauties. Action Fraud, the UK's national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime, has two new scam emails that they want you to look out for. They might look like the real deal, but they are definitely phishy.
BBC
‘Argos’ email
This con, made to look like an email from Argos, has been sent out in the past three weeks, apparently offering you the chance to win a £500 prize.
But Action Fraud has told us that the email contains two potentially malicious hyperlinks. There’s one hidden within the ‘unique code number’ and another one on the bottom of the message under ‘click here’ to unsubscribe from emails.
The National Fraud Investigation Bureau has received more than 20 recent reports of this phishing email and although all of them were exactly the same, they were sent from different addresses, such as: kentavious@bate208.fireandfame.com; prince@textto232.concentendeavors.com or sedna@e3da34a06.findgoodtrades.com.
The email asks you to click on a link to a £500 gift card. But, guess what? There is no gift card. If you click, the chances are that the fraudsters will ask for your bank account details in order to make the transfer, which will never arrive. DO NOT DO IT!
BBC
‘TalkTalk’ email
In the last two weeks, the NFIB (National Fraud Investigation Bureau) has received several reports of this scam email - apparently from TalkTalk. It claims to be ‘performing regular maintenance of our security measures’, but people who click on the link will find their details are far from secure.
The messages were always sent from the same spoofed email address: noreply@talktalk.net, pretending to be from TalkTalk itself. The message contains a hyperlink leading to a malicious website/domain which looks like TalkTalk, but definitely does not belong to the company. In fact, anyone clicking on to this fake email would be taken to a fake TalkTalk account, where they would be prompted to input personal details, including bank information.
If you have done this, the official advice is to contact your bank and report it to Action Fraud. If you've got the email but not clicked the link, you can also report it to Action Fraud.
This scam is not thought to be linked to the October 2015 TalkTalk data breach when customers' details were taken. You can read TalkTalk’s official guide to phishing scams.
Watchdog and BBC Three are working together. If you have a story about a scam or any other rip off you'd like to shout about, you can contact the producers at Watchdog directly on watchdog@bbc.co.uk and put "BBC Three" in the subject heading.
This article was first published on Wednesday March 23rd, 2016
