Yet another scam

Just a heads up I got an email purporting to be from the DVLA telling me that my vehicle was no longer taxed because my debit card payment had failed. This caught me on the hop a little as we bought a new to us vehicle last week and the dealer taxed it online for us. On checking the email it was obviously a scam. it does not state the registration number or any other details. It appears to link to a new tax form and payment option, didn't open it. I did check online with the DVLA website just to make sure and our vehicle is taxed ok.

Theres always someone out to try and rob you!

Dave

Just received the same scam. Identified as a scam immediately

Couldn't possibly be from the DVLA. Unlike the rest of the planet who are working pretty normally, the cretins at the DVLA are apparently still severly hampered by COVID, so couldn't possibly organise sending out requests / forms

(You may get the imression that they are not my favorite people - wife still waiting for licence renewal 12 months after appplying - even got the local MP involved, hasn't made much difference even though she quite obviously did try to get sense out of these morons)

Do please take a moment to forward such things to

[email protected]

MichaelG.

Trouble is, so many of the 'Report to' seem to be only to serve the feel good factor. TPS doesn't stop all calls, 'Phishing ' and 'Block' on t'internet don't either.

The road to hell is paved with good intention.

Regards Ian.

My wife applied for a new license (on line) on Wednesday evening. The new license arrived this morning. So the turn around was only two working days.

Excellent service from DVLA.

Andrew.

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Edited By Nicholas Farr on 18/07/2022 10:51:36

Hi, it's easy to check your car tax and MOT vehicleenquiry.seviice.gov.uk and you can check your own insurance as well ownvehical.askmid.com

Regards Nick.

Applied February still no licence. They couldn't organise a party in Downing Street

Also impressed at receiving my new license after 5 days from an online application, 2 of the days wear a weekend. I was surprised that it was so quick.

Just had my first scam on the mobile, 'Collect your parcel or it is sent back'. pity I never sent for anything!

I am not convinced there is any real way to report fraud attempts so the authorities can try to deal with them.

Recently I forwarded a false sales attempt (purportedly for some Lenor product) to phishing at BT. gov. and HMRC.

This elicited automatic thanks from the first two but "not here, guv" from the Preventy-Men.

The same false Lenor ad appeared again this morning. I did not try to report it. No point. Nothing happens. I just blocked its sender and odd-looking domain names.

.

I have tried Action Fraud in the past, two or three times, but not for several years. I found it a badly-designed, clumsy, long-winded, pure-menu questionnaire that after I had negotiated it, revealed itself not to cover what I was trying to report, and lacking any forwarding system. I have not tried it since. I learnt subsequently that is not even a branch of a relevant UK Government department, but some contractor in America! So it is hardly likely to care as long as it looks busy on easy money from (as it sees them) foreign tax-payers.

I did try to report the forged images to the Lenor-brand company, Proctor & Gamble, but like so many big companies now its web-site is designed to deter or prevent contact.

.'

It's time we took a very hard look, as a nation, at this. I cannot believe it impossible to do two things:

Via strengthening existing anti-crime links between them; establish a proper service run by the GCHQ and Home Office and co-operating with the telecommunications and financial companies and their allies overseas; able to trace and block the originating equipment of any fraud or other malevolent attack, destroy the message and pass the identity to its local Police. That won't necessarily stop the perpetrators in corrupt or malevolent regimes, especially those acting "officially" in their own nation, but will show we mean business!

Stop the methods by which criminals can either adopt UK phone-numbers from overseas, or high-jack genuine phone-numbers (nicknamed 'spoofing', e-post names and company web-sites.

I know it’s only an automated response, so the nay-sayers will continue to say nay

But this is the acknowledgement currently being sent by [email protected]

.

[National Cyber Security Centre]

Thank you for forwarding a suspicious message to us. Timely alerts from people like you help us to act quickly and protect many more people from being affected.

As of 30th June 2022, the number of reports received stand at more than 12,500,000 with the removal of more than 86,000 scams across 159,000 URLs.

We are unable to inform you of the outcome of our review, but we can confirm that we do act upon every message received.

< etc. >

.

Give ‘em a chance

MichaelG.

I can think of a very good reason for not admitting specific results.

Got a text the other day supposedly from the NHS saying I've been in contact with someone with covid & to ring the number they sent needless to say I deleted it as I've not been anywhere, To be honest I'm fed up with it all the loads of rogues trying to rip us all off all the time.

We've little choice, in the hope that they'll get teeth later.

Trouble is: 'The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is a UK government organisation that has the power to investigate and take down scam email addresses and websites.' Investigate and Take Down, that's all.

Good to know they're taking down URLs, but what about the crimes they represent? How many prosecutions and convictions? Unless I missed it the 2020 Annual Review, is silent on them, though it often highlights the scale of the problem.

The review suggests to me that the NCSC hasn't been funded or empowered to do much in the way of crime fighting. They offer all assistance short of actual help and there's nothing in the review that would worry me if I were a cyber criminal. I feel public money would be better spent building up a force of trained policemen to bring the criminals behind scams to book. Possibly the underlying issue is that the UK Justice system is already bulging at the seams and couldn't take on more court cases and prison sentences without major new spending. It's a difficult balance: no-one likes paying tax; worse, raising too much slugs the economy.

Dave

The Data Protection Act must seem like a dream come true to criminals. One government department cannot provide information to another department for fear of contravening the act. Talk about a good way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Peter

In the last couple of days I have received phone calls from London prefixed land lines. Both calls showed as legitimate businesses. The first I didn’t get to before it rang off, the second I answered but hung up as soon as an Indian sounding male started to speak with some background noise of a busy office. Have no idea what they expect, may hang on next time to find out.

Dave -

The NCSC is probably doing all it can, but that is limited to deleting and blocking the messages if the criminals are in foreign countries.

I don't know far back they can trace the messages anyway. The "View Source" tool (on BT Internet - others might use similar with a different name) often shows the message's open but strange-looking name is on top of another equally odd one. I have seen one analysis giving a chain of about four e-post addresses including apparently, a donkey sanctuary in Devon, but usually the tool goes only one layer deep; and I gather the gangs are adept at zig-zagging the path to make tracing the origin. They also seem to change sender-name and domain more often than their socks, so I guess that by the time anyone's reported it, it's been moved and the authorities are now blocking an address that no longer exists anyway.

So when the NCSC says it has deleted a URL it might only be the last stages in the path.

In such cases our Police can and presumably do (well, I hope they do) pass the details to those in the country concerned, but really that is all they can do.

The people to blame then are not our own authorities but the foreign governments sheltering the blighters, perhaps because their own Police do not themselves have the resources and skill to winkle them out.

.

The last fraudulent telephone call I received used a rather robotic recording from "Bank Security", but unusually, the voice was female and sounded English.

The last three criminal e-posts I've had were two pretending to offer me Lenor "Scent Enhancer" (cutting oil and Jeye's Fluid are fine by me), with an intervening third wanting me to take some action in the light of an unspecified "new regulation". The site also had a link to the company's "security" or fraud-reporting department. Only, the real company being used in this way, was a bank with whom I have never had an account. I reported both.

Having had a medical suspension I re-applied for a licence last October. The only response so far was a letter in May thanking me for my 'recent' application, and asking me to re-do all the forms that I'd sent them with the original application.

Useless b**t***s !

Edited By Bob Unitt 1 on 19/07/2022 10:24:27