Anyone can fall foul of a scam – and I’m proof of that

Very sorry to hear your experience. Something similar nearly happened to me once but I stopped short just in time – I noticed the address code in the lower bar of the e-mail page that appeared as I hovered over the link and I hesitated long enough to realise it was not correct. It is so easy to be taken in by an unfortuitous combination of circumstances. My ISP’s e-mail filtering system is now much more effective and such a message would not drop into my in-box but go into the junk folder. My bank now puts my residential postcode on any e-mails it sends me with information about services – this is a further safeguard. I once requested the bank to improve the language used in their official e-mails to make it less casual; I noticed that the scammers were having difficulty composing literate English messages so anything the banks did to employ correct grammar, punctuation and sentence structure would minimise the risk of impersonation. I think there has been some improvement in this regard but we still have to be exceptionally wary – there are some clever criminals out there.

Maybe I don’t have complicated financial affairs but the only emails I can remember receiving from my bank have been to confirm appointments.

As John says, the standard of English betrays many scams. Most of those I have received are well known, with warnings on websites, but I have reported a few that are either new or not well publicised.

Amanda provides a good example of how, in certain circumstances, we can be less vigilant than usual. It does not surprise me that those who suffer frequent computer problems are easy to persuade that they have a problem with their computers and become victims of a scam.

I use NatWest online banking and had no idea what I would have done in Amanda’s position, where I could not log in. Having investigated, there is clear information on their website, but if that was not there I would phone the bank for advice, as I did when I was having a lot of trouble with a Halifax savings account.

Though I have never been victim of a scam, I think I have done something silly by placing a deposit on a car, which turned out to have been sold by another branch of a dealership. I cannot believe that I have been silly enough to have given a £300 deposit, via debit card, without getting something in writing. Normally I don’t have much sympathy with those who let themselves be cheated but I’m feeling rather humble at the moment.

Not a scam as such (debatable) but certainly immoral business practice. As a disabled person my door entry system buzzed. The caller identified themselves as “wishing to discuss changes at the local BT exchange that may effect my service” Suspecting all was not well (distraction burglaries etc) I refused entry and told them to write to me. Unhappy with this I called the police who attended within 4 minutes. They detained the 2 people. It turns ot they were representing Talk Talk and trying to sell phone and broadband services. Although not ACTUALLY saying they were from BT they certainly gave me that impression, BEWARE of these sharp practces. I have written to Talk Talk to complain.

This has just happened to me- The thing is i haven’t clicked any dodgy links or given out any info. In fact the card the fraud took place on is one I never use for withdrawing cash and don’t even know the pin of- It’s a joint account card just associated with housey direct debits and the occasional pizza delivery( no pin needed for that..) I only lost 60 pounds but both my cards have been cancelled and my online acount currently doesn’t work .

I’d really like to know the questions that are asked to verify the ID. Incidentally NATWEST flaged it up themselves (even though they gave the money…. dunno how that works) as they said the voice didn’t match my profile (I’m guessing foreign).

it’s not much money but it’s scarey- They said they’d refund the money, just got some forms to fill in. I also had the embarrassing experience at the petrol station!

@amamda, Hands up all those who haven’t read my comments on the 26th June on https://conversation.which.co.uk/money/natwest-glitch-bank-account-meltdown-payment-problem-advice/

warning of Natwest phsihing emails. [That I’d cut and pasted from Action Frauds twitter feed, they’re definitely worth following as is your local Trading Standards]

And I’m sure I posted a warning on another convo when the RBS fiasco broke warning of it being a scammers paradise, but I can’t find that post 🙁

Oh and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an O2 email scam doing the rounds at the moment either. Companies who fail to provide a reliable service just play into the hands of these fraudsters.

Please don’t assume that scams are necessarily the fault of the cardholder.

My credit card company informed me 6 years ago that there was a suspicious use of my card in Florida. I confirmed that I was in the UK (never having visited the USA). The several fraudulent puchases had been stopped, and the card cancelled. None of my other cards were affected.

Recently, by googling my mobile number, I discovered the full details of the above card published in a text file that had been “dumped” from a Russian web site (name ending in .ru). It also contained my then address, along with the delivery address and recipient’s name (a relative). This text file also contained 2 dates (again, from 6 years ago). When I checked the credit card statements, the dates corresponded to an internet purchase one evening with payment being accepted the following day.

As this file also listed similar details for 1000 other people and their credit/debit cards, I contacted the company (now under new ownership), and they admitted that the credit card details had not been properly secured at the time (under previous ownership). They promptly agreed to contact various search engines and any other relevant organisations to remove the offending internet file. However, the cache still left a trace, so I contacted them again, and they said they would recheck to see if the cache would be purged within another month or so. It now appears to have been purged. I suspect that the purchases in Florida and the above internet order were linked.

My efforts to report this matter to the Police and the Credit card company in the last 2 months met with no interest. I would recommend that everyone checks their telephone numbers/address/postal code on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. I would not suggest you directly check your card numbers in search engines on home computers – if it’s been hacked, you may have just given the hackers your credit card number.

A few years ago I noticed £3.75 was missing from my First Direct account – I had not clicked anything anywhere – I checked with First Direct and found the application was fraudulent – So I informed them – but a week later I found the same people had removed £350 from my account – I was livid because I had informed them. However they refunded the £353.75 and changed the card – I can only assume my card had been cloned in some way, Hasn’t happened again since – but I check often.

I have recently fallen victim to exactly the same as you Amanda. Although only £120 was taken out of my bank, I only had £140. I am a recent graduate unable to find work and attempting to live off JSA. I had this £140 from a £75 gift from my grandma for passing my degree and the rest from selling my possessions on eBay. I am now being faced with charges from O2 and my laptop company as I am unable to make the payments this month. This will obviously push me further into debt and over my overdraught, probably resulting in bank charges from Natwest!

Natwests response? My fault. My problem. To them, it looks like a small amount has gone out of my own stupidity. Yes, I shouldn’t have opened the email, but that small amount was practically all I had!

I am appealing this, does anyone have any advice for this process?

I was surfing the net and I came across a link to someone who had discovered a cheap way of whitening her teeth and at the side of that page was an advert about getting a free delivery of some sort stuff to whiten teeth. I clicked “RUSH MY ORDER” , it didn’t ask for any details and I divulged absolutely no information. But from that click they got my bank details .Apparently, I had signed up for a regular, monthly amount of whitening agent. £70, then £44 disappearedfrom my account. I couldn’t get help from my bank because they said that only I could cancel the arrangement. There was paperwork with the product but I couldn’t see anything like a phone number. My husband found a name ACTIPRO and a phone number. After trying numerous times, he managed to cancel (he has POA over me)

Another thing that banks could do to help stop scams is not ask for security details over the phone when they call you. More than once my credit card provider has called me about a potentially dodgy transaction and promptly started asking to check my security. I think they should just say that there is a possible fraudulent transaction and ask me to call the number on my card.

My experience mirorred Amanda’s. I received a “Santander” email advising of changes to its website with links to view them. That didn’t interest me but as it had been sent to my work email address which I no longer wanted to be used I thought I’d use the link to delete it & register my private email on Santander’s web site. That was the scam because I had to input my security info to make the change which went straight to the crooks. They immediately emptied my current a/c plus the £1,000 overdraft facility. Santander didn’t even notice this was an extremely unusual & suspicious transaction & paid out in full, no questions asked!, even though I had never been in the red once during the many years of banking with them. My a/c was frozen for over a month, no access to any funds to pay STOs or DDs or pay any bills. Eventually Santander made a full refund but they were an absolute nightmare to deal with. I’ve since closed the a/c & opened elsewhere. The FSA told me banks were obligated to repay victims of scams unless they could prove you were negligent in giving your security info to others & neither Amanda nor I were negligent.

Amanda- I’ve just had the EXACT same thing happen to me with Natwest. I’ve just had £240 taken out of my account because I stupidly put my details into that email that looked like a legitimate Natwest email :(( I really hope I get my money back- I think the only difference with me is that it has been reported as a fraud case, they said they are investigating the matter but I just feel like such an idiot!!!

Yes Tina. you need to have a final letter from the bank, refusing to pay you back, then you can call the Ombudsman, they will send you forms etc etc

Having read all the previous entries and hearing of similar scams, I thought I should share my experience of only last Monday. I very rarely remove cash from my account (April 2012 was my last) and I don’t subscribe to online or telephone banking. I was lodging some cheques at a local branch of the Nat West and casually requested a mini statement, to my horror £2750 had been withdrawn in amounts of £250 per day plus one emergency cash withdrawal..all via ATM!!! I immediately notified the bank and the card was very quickly cancelled. The amount has been re-credited to my account pending a full enquiry (I hope this remains the case). The fraud team told me that it appeared that an individual has registered for online banking to a mobile phone on my account…ashtonishing – as mobile phone aren’t EVEN registered to addresses (if SIM only) I questioned how this could possibly happen and they just questioned whether I had ever done online banking…I never have and confirmed to them that I now have no intention of doing so – I have had a block put on my account so that any future request to online bank will have to be confirmed by my attendance at a branch with photographic evidence…Hope it all turns out okay 🙂

I had a similar experience recently – on my email. The account was suspended after I was (first) required to enter a human recognition number, and then informed I had ‘exceeded the number of wrong log-in attempts’, and should re-enter my details below. I didn’t.

I have ‘lost’ my email account before, and it is a dispiriting and devastating experience to lose years of correspondece and all internet communication details. On this latest occasion I logged-off and closed the internet connection; then re-opened re-entered my email access details. No problem!!

The clever thing about this attempted fraud was the request to type the human recognition number (or whatever is the right technical term for one of these). This lends an air of authenticity to the apparent security system, but must have been a connection to the phishing site. I was lucky.

Just a further warning. In the first post at the top of the page (by John Ward) he writes “My bank now puts my residential postcode on any e-mails it sends me with information about services – this is a further safeguard”.

Today I have received an email, purporting to be from the Halifax, which is clearly a phishing scam as it invites me to sign in to online banking using one of two embedded links. Also, the originator’s email address (hidden beneath the cover name of “Halifax Bank”) is definitely bogus.

However, the email does address me correctly using my surname and, what’s more, does include (correctly) the last 3 digits of my postcode. This is, as they say, to “confirm authenticity”.

So the moral is, don’t be fooled, as the scammers can even acquire this information to lull you into a false sense of security – though I’d be curious to know how?

exact same thing happened to me they only took 40 pounds natwest should make a personal password with you that you would never forget to say over phone before letting any moneys to be transferred out of cash points,

Just a word of warning. Had a call from Bank of England to say I had been scammed last April, knew I had not as I was living overseas, however, chap proceeded to tell me it was in connection with the Bank of Indian, warning bells!! Got quite aggressive when I asked for details and sort code of b of e (work in a bank too) would only send forms over the Internet and not via post – just love to keep them hopeful. Got quite cross when I would not give PayPal detail although never told I did. So, be warned if you have been scammed, they are scamming you again by offering to refund to original scam.

I had something similar with barclays last Friday, and I`ve just had the exact email purporting to come from Nat West: `We have detected suspicious activity etc.`. I didn`t click the link, but merely took a copy then deleted the email. I was going to phone the bank, but, after reading some of these comments, I`m going to drive the 15 miles to the bank first thing tomorrow.

I am getting text massages saying that several people are setting up accounts on my natwest when I don’t even have a natwest account 😳😴

It is now 2016 and this article helped me a lot to protect myself from Suspicious transactions in my account. Last week I continuously received phone calls and emails that they are speaking from NatWest bank and one of my relative has gifted me £ 50000 and they they want bank account number to deposit the amount in my account and they were also asking my credit card number and its password. This seems to me fraudulent call and to remove my doubt I called NatWest Customer Service and asked them about the matter. They replied that they have never made such calls and told me that other customers are also receiving similar calls and beware me about such calls. One of my friend who received similiar call, told them every thing and next day there was £ 10000 fraudulent transaction from his account. Best way to protect ourselves is to avoid such calls.

I clicked on a link in a txt message telling me that my I tunes account had been de-activated and that I needed to submit my details to re-activate it. I did start putting info in i.e. my email, DOB and part of my home address but something alerted me and I closed the message. A couple of hours later I was notified that the link was a phishing site. Hoping that the limited info I put in wont cause any fraudulent activity?