At It Again - But New Twist? (Scammers)

At first glance it may look real....

The heading and sending address though start giving the game away, right from the American-style date.

Pasted in condensed text form below. There are enough errors in the English, so I hate to think what they did to the Welsh language!

[Start now] was the fatal link.

However, it seems to have a new twist.

It cannot be forwarded as it is to the 'phishing' services, suggesting a protection routine in it.

I set "View Source" onto it, copied the lot - all the source and tracking, error-trapping in my computer, text-processing, text itself, and sent that as e-mail text to "Phishing @ " of BT, my bank, HMRC and "report.phishing" at gov. uk .

Perhaps the gangs are learning how to prevent their being reported.....

@@@@@@@@@@@@

Tax vehicle lace>UKlace>' [Recent reminder received on 2/7/2023 11:07:58] / 836801 / Letter from DVLA [Last change] [Check if a vehicle is taxed-196E4E Apply | Gwiriwch a oes treth ar gerbyd

Driver and Vehicle Licence Support - [ID:#randomhexnumber#]

To: [email protected];

07/02/2023 11:08

1

Tax your vehicle - GOV.UK

Dear [email protected],

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED EMAIL - PLEASE DO NOT REPLY AS EMAILS RECEIVED AT THIS ADDRESS CANNOT BE RESPONDED TO.

Your vehicle is no longer taxed. Invoice ID is 13DCCE1EC9BE

DVLA have been notified electronically about you latest payment for your vehicle tax failed because there is not enough money on you debit card.

We have generated a new invoice, and we suggest you to use a credit card instead of a debit, to avoid any other consequences that might appear in case again won't be enough funds inside.

[Start now]

You can pay by debit or credit card, or Direct Debit.

You must tax your vehicle even if you do not have to pay anything, for example if youre exempt because youre disabled.

Additional Information

Youll be showed a form containing question regarding your personal or residential information.

In some cases, you may be required to enter the previous bank account information as a security measure.

Upon successful submission of first two steps, your profile will be updated and youll be shown a confirmation text.

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 07/02/2023 17:04:42

Hi, if anyone has any doubt, they only need to go to gov.uk/vehicle-tax check, to check their vehicle is taxed, and it will show you the date when the tax and MOT is due. You can also check that your own vehicle is insured by using MID.

Regards Nick.

I think someone said "believe only half of what you see and none of what you read". It is a shame that we have to be so wary of everyone.

It reminds me of "adverts" that appeared on TV back in the 50's warning people about shady market dealers selling "real" bargains using auction like sales pitch . There were "stooges" eagerly "buying" the "bargains" to get unknowing punters to also buy what turned out to be box of rubbish when they thought they were buying a canteen of cutlery.

Nothing changes except the method of "The Sting".

CS

This particular one was really quite shoddily made so showed itself up very rapidly, but still gave me a shock when I first spotted it, and it is easy to realise why people do fall into the trap.

I have had a series pretending to be from the Bank of Santander, and these do look real... or might if you have an account with that bank.

I only have to take the folder from the shelf to ascertain the legal status of my car - quicker than web-site delving!

'

As I recall I think I've only once been caught and that was when still a callow yoof - 20 or so. The trickster was on a side-stall at a rally, with a simple gambling game that looked a dead cert 50/50 chance. It was a sloping board with numbered traps for balls allowed to run freely down it when released from a hinged tray. Even totals you win; odd, he does The trick lay in the stall-holder adding up the scores and immediately re-setting the game too quickly for the customer to verify it. It might too have been numbered biased by probability in the operator's favour; or always to return odd sums, but it always came up with the punter losing.. (For the record I don't think I have played a fruit-machine more than once or twice in my life.)

It was something like a nasty trick I have heard played on tyro darts players, by which the victim talked into a standard 301- or 501- down game but for money or at least rounds of drinks, cannot possibly win.

The more sophisticated ones, look very close to being a legit website, but will use a slightly differing font on a letter in the name or logo.

They do but the sending address is often enough to show the message is false.

BTinternet has a tool called 'View Source'. Most of what it produces is a mass of commands and printable character representations of the programme, incomprehensible to an ordinary user, but it does show the sending path. This sometimes reveals part of a chain presumably made to try to prevent tracing to sender, but the criminal's URL is always anything but what it's pretending to be.

It also shows how the security software has treated it, and although I can't read "computerese"; it's noticeable that the many of these messages are often marked as "clean", meaning the message itself is not the problem but the anti-virus programme might not investigate the links.

I do not know if other e-post systems have a similar tool.

If you use Gmail, these are all filtered out by their spam filter. I have never received one at my Gmail address.

On my other email account, an old Hotmail address, I have it set to receive emails from contacts only. All others go into the spam folder, which I check occasionally, and it is full of such emails. There must be literally millions of them sent daily. I very much doubt that btinternet or other authorities can do a darned thing about them. They come from some kid in a net cafe in Lagos, Nigeria, or a warehouse full of computer jockeys in Mumbai or similar and they change location and email addresses daily and are pretty much untraceable. I am sure the Lagos police have much bigger things to deal with, even if they would ever respond to contact from UK police.

Such emails are now just a normal part of digital life. Up to individuals to be net savvy and not fall for them. Never click on links in emails requesting details or payments or anything else. If in doubt, check independently with the relevant website, eg your vehicle registration department etc. The scammers rely on the one in 10 thousand who panic and click on the link and give up their details or money. Don't be that one.

Just to digress there appears to be a proliferation of lottery’s appearing on the internet and being featured on Facebook that offer expensive watches, Rolex and Omega etc, as prizes, also lotteries featuring unique collectors cars worth fair sums of money. These must be scams particularly as so many are appearing at the same time. Dave W

LOL the lotteries might be genuine but the Rolexes may not be. As the touts in Hong Kong used to say to us " Genuine Rolex copy watch". But I would not touch any lottery on Facebook or the like. Way too risky.

I always look at the E mail address of the sender.

Sometimes friends seem suddenly to have E mail addresses ending in "br", "ru" or "de", rather than uk..

They tend to be sent to Trash and then dleted!

A funny one was from a friend who had been in California the day before, but had been mugged in Kiev!

Less amusing were the messages from a friend who had died some time ago!

Pity that he scammers can't find a way to make an honest living.

Howard

I would not touch Facebook and similar open-identity sites either.

These are commercial data-harvesters that care not who buys your information from them; let alone any re-sale.

Even using it can be risky.. A friend sensible enough not to publish information like advance holiday plans anywhere, nevertheless proudly displayed photos of his completed model-engineering project on Facebook. Despite no hint of selling it, he soon received odd enquiries on its monetary value... He did block them, but others might slip up and FB users have come unstuck in various ways.

"Store loyalty cards" are loyal only to the shops and their advertising agencies. The latter are even developing live advertising systems so that if you are near the shop door, your too-smart 'phone will be pinged with offers personally tempting by being based on your previous purchases.

If you use a too-smart ' speaker you may as well give up on personal security and privacy; and indeed it could be quite dangerous - re note above about holidays.

You might guess I refuse to own anything prefixed "smart", or a supermarket's so-called "Club Card" - you'd be right. Nor do I live glued to my non-Internet, portable telephone.

Nor do I ever use the same name and password on more than one web-site or account registration; though it worries me that most such sites - including BT - do not give ready password-changing routines.

..

Such precautions, and limiting on-line transactions to the minimum, help. Yet the combination of these legal commercial systems with Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and the like monopolising the Internet technically as well as commercially; forms an absolute gift to the hackers, thieves and indeed malevolent State actors.

So it is not difficult to see how the fraudsters and identity-thieves obtain our names, e-post and physical addresses, and telephone numbers. Large businesses and the major social[?]-media sites make money by helping them!

Very often they are desperately poor people in Third World countries with few or no options. EG homeless street kids in Nigeria operating out of internet cafes. And increasingly, they are people-trafficked slaves held in captivity in some Third World country and forced to sit all day and call and call and call or email and email, then if they get a strike, they pass it on to their captors for the big con. It's those guys at the top who should be jailed, and the traffickers.

Then there are the out and out scumbags who are just too lazy to get a real job. Increasingly we are hearing more local accents on the scam calls and in some instances where they tell the victim they are from the national broadband supplier and they need access to their computer to fix a problem, a white van even turns up outside their house and "technicians" are seen "working" on the local cabling network. So obviously very local, and very well organised.

Here is a tale of woe from our local news today about a woman who "won" an online lottery: LINK

The short version is:

The 22-year-old hairdresser from Colac, Victoria, won the $100,000 4WD in an online charity raffle organised by Hello Lifestyle Australia.

...

Hello Lifestyle Australia’s website and all social media channels have since been shut down.

Talking of "too smart" things, be wary of internet connected (including wireless) video cameraa and doorbells. These can have significant security issues. This can be because of poor design or deliberate backdoors and data harvesting. Ther have been bans on the use of at least one big name Chinese video cameras (Hikvision) on sensitive government sites because of security concerns. Video doorbells etc also require compliance with data protection laws in the UK if they have a view of the street.
Even your smart TV is likely to be reporting what you watch. Some even analyise the pcture to tell what you are watching.

Robert.

Oh the old tricks are a still about...

Yesterday I had the "I am a lawyer..." [that word shows foreign origin immediately, even before unlikely sending address and the ropey second-language English]

"....acting for your relative who died twenty years ago...." [un-named, but as if I would not have known at the time]

"... leaving money... " [ I'll send my Cayman Island account number and Swiss accountant's details.]

Forward to 'phishing@ ' etc; Block, Delete.

.

Robert -

Your last sentence: Really? I don't have a TV but I'd have thought one would not need a special gadget to be told what one is watching!

Yesterday, whilst I was busy in the workshop, the BBC Radio 4 program “Sideways” came on. This was episode 39 entitled “Please, I beg you”. It is described as follows;

When Ben Taylor receives a Facebook message from a stranger in Liberia, asking in badly spelled English for financial or business assistance, he quickly assumes it’s a scam. But instead of just ignoring the message, he decides to find out about the person behind it. In this episode, Matthew Syed explores what happens when you let your guard down and make a leap of trust.

It is as least an interesting listen and made me think.

Ian

Robert, re your remark about cameras taking in a street view. There was an incident here in Brighton not so many years ago, where a pedestrian was grabbed by 2/3 men in a quiet side street and bundled into a vehicle, all on a residents security camera at the front of the house. Resident witness called Police who seeing the camera, requested and took away the footage. Nothing apparently said about street views being illegal. "Cherrypicking law enforcement" comes to mind.

John

John -

The camera there being by far the lesser offence, more likely.

Perhaps this is becoming an increasingly grey area though due to the proliferation of camera phones, security videos, and vehicle cameras; with the Police now frequently requesting images of offences or accidents taking place.

'

Ian -

I missed that programme, What did Mr. Taylor find about the Liberian?

Nigel it's available on the BBC web site to watch.

Nigel,

Bearing in mind that when I listen to the radio in the workshop I can miss odd chunks when I do something noisy....Ben responded to the Liberian, Joel I think, and asked how he could help. Joel described his plan but Ben proposed an alternative, his suggestion was that if Joel sent through some good photographs of Liberia, he could get them published, and was prepared to share the proceeds 50/50. I should say that Ben is no mug and is sharing his experience with his social media followers.

Joel sends some poor photos, so Ben sets about coaching him in photography and even sends him a low cost digital camera to help. Joel works diligently at improving his skills and ends up sending good quality to photos to Ben. Ben realises that he has to follow through with his promise to monetise the photos or else become the scammer himself, so he publishes a book of photos. As promised, he sends 50% of the proceeds to Joel.

Ben then decides that he would like to send his share of the proceeds to a charity in Liberia and asks Joel for a recommendation. Joel recommends a local school, but rather than give the contact details, he asks Ben to send the money to him to pass on. Now comes the leap of trust.

Ben trusts Joel and sends the money.

The money gets to the school where it makes a real difference. Ben later visits Liberia and he and Joel become firm friends......or something like that.