New year, new scams. Unfortunately, there’s never a lack of predatory people trying to steal your money for an easy payday. Our first scam of the day actually came through to one of our team, who flagged it immediately:
To an untrained eye, this email may look completely legitimate – but there are still some key giveaways to look out for:
• Firstly, it’s important to remember that if you ever receive an email from a sender you don’t recognise, DO NOT click any links, as this may open you up to potential hackers.
• Look at the sender’s email address – emails like this will almost always come from an actual organisation. If this was a legitimate email, the sender would more likely be “example@tvlicensing”, but here it looks more like someone’s personal email address. Take note of the “.jp” in the address too, a key giveaway that this isn’t from a UK sender or company.
• Another thing to look at is the formatting; the odd spacing between lines, the seemingly random “®” characters in the subject line, and the non-sensical “™” character after “Sign into your T.V Licence account” (Note as well the period in the middle of “TV” which doesn’t show up anywhere else). These characters come after business or product names or logos and nowhere else. The very last line also has a spelling error (untill [sic]).
• The last key giveaway is the sense of urgency; “LAST REMINDER!”, visit our website before this date – this is a way to make the reader panic, and thus not think clearly before clicking any links or looking at the email closer.
The bottom line is, if you have any suspicions, just look closer!
A Reminder about HMRC Scams
Scammers love pretending to be the government to get money out of people. Every year, hundreds of thousands of emails, voicemails and texts get sent out from scammers claiming to be from HMRC to unsuspecting people.
Above is an example of a scam text claiming to be from HMRC about issuing living expenses. On the right is the same text with all the suspicious parts highlighted; unprofessional language, typing errors, a shortened link, usually done with phishing links and spelling errors.
You can report suspicious HMRC emails, texts, social media accounts and phone calls here.
Microsoft Login Phishing – Be Aware!
We’ve received a couple of reports about a phishy Microsoft login email going around. The email might say something along the lines of “We detected a suspicious sign in from [location]”, and then may ask you to follow a phoney link to report the user which may ask you to log in with your password. Scammers will then use this info to gain access to your accounts.
Deepfakes – The Newest Danger in Scamming
A deepfake is a video or piece of audio created with the help of AI to make a person say or do things that never happened. Despite being a relatively new technology, deepfake videos and audio are incredibly advanced and quite difficult to tell them apart from real footage if they’re made well enough.
Could you spot a deepfake? Try this quiz from Which?, and see how many you can spot!
Want to beat the scammers? Sign up for our Scam Alerts Mailing List today and stay up to date on the latest scams!
Scam emails can be reported to report@phishing.gov.uk
Scam texts can be reported by forwarding them to 7726
Phishing websites can be reported to the National Cyber Security Centre
