Must read!!! Internet Scams

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It's that time of the year again.   There are countless fraudsters trying to rip people off and/or infect your computers.

Here are some ways to keep from being a victim;

1. Never, ever open an attachment that you are not expecting.  

2. Never, ever give out personal details over the phone unless you know for 100% sure who you are dealing with.   No real business will ask you for your password or PIN number.

3. Emails sent to "Customer" and the like are to be treated as bogus.  They know your name.  Sometimes they may send out general info emails, which don't ask you to do anything that may not use your name, but this is becoming exceedingly rare.

4. Report suspected email fraud to the company via their dedicated fraud email address.  Sadly, you will need to look this up as each company used a different one; i.e. Paypal uses [email protected], while some using "[email protected]", some use "[email protected]", etc, etc.  

In the UK, if it's not directly related to a specific business, but a "Nigerian" type scam or other, then you can send it to [email protected] , that's the UK's national cyber crime taskforce.

EDIT:  please use [email protected]  now.

5. Never do business over the doorstep, unless you know them, like the paperboy.

6. Never click on a link in an email, expecting it's real.  Most of the time it looks almost identical.   Either type it in your self, or use one of the links you already bookmarked for it.

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Paypal is having problems with fake emails.  According to one report, it has increased over 14 times in August compared to June. 

A customer service agent I spoke to said that only 1 in 11+ emails claiming to be from Paypal are real.  He repeated what I said in the 1st post here; they know your name.  You are not "Dear Customer", but "Dear [insert name on your account here]".

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Update

Paypal also uses [email protected] now, but they prefer [email protected]   

After forwarding them the suspect email, you will get 2 emails from them.  One email will be a "thank you for sending this to us" email and the other will be one that tells you whether or not the suspect email is bad. 

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NETFLIX is having a problem with phishing scam emails. 

I don't know how wide spread this is, but it's definitely a big problem in the UK. 

Don't use the links provided in the email. 

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I don't know if this applies outside the UK. 

Police Scotland and other UK Police Departs have warned about scam calls claiming to be from Amazon Prime. 

There are 2 types of calls;

1. Robo-calls that offer cheap Prime memberships.    Not only is this not from Amazon, once they get your banking details, they steal more than just the £40, a lot more.

2.  Robo-call and sometimes normal call claiming to be from Amazon Prime saying your Prime membership is messed up somehow and they need to access your computer to fix it.   They then steal your details to rob your bank accounts and start new credit cards in your name.

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BetEnsured.com  is a scam site in Nigeria. 

If you get emails from them, as I did, Police Scotland says to block their entire domain in your email account. 

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[email protected] is UK's National Cyber Security Crime's email for reporting bogus emails.  This replaces the City of London Police email I listed above (now corrected).

Use this email for every email claiming to be from any part of the UK government, at any level.  

Also, CC them when reporting scam emails to businesses, such as eBay, PayPal, etc.

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If you live in the UK and you get a text message about tax refunds claiming to be from a part of the government, it is a scam.   

This is also a common scam in the US and several other countries.