Scam warning: British Gas phishing email

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In these days of Zoom talks, I was almost taken in by a hacker who had somehow inserted themself into a website I wanted to listen to. I was invited to give them my credit card details to “register”. I didn’t and skipped the talk. Visiting the website later I found they had been hacked. Be careful even when trying to use innocent websites. You may be ambushed.

I have been getting scam emails telling me my emails have been blocked and my account will be closed for a few months now, the scammers are hacking onto peoples accounts and sending these emails out. I had my account hacked last year but it was spotted and all emails they tried to send were stopped luckily but they still manage to hack into other accounts. it is annoying as fast as I spam one I get another from a different address, we need a way of filtering and spamming emails by type and not just address.

A useful check on an email such as those referred to is to see if it is addressed to you by name. If it is just an impersonal email not addressed to anyone or to ‘Dear Customer’ it’s probably a scam. If it addressed to ‘Dear Mr Smith’ (obviously your name) then there is a likelyhood that it is genuine.
If in doubt, delete it, never click on any link. If it turns out to have been genuine the sender will contact you again. The ‘chat’ facilty on many companies websites is a quick way of verifying the situation.

Not a British Gas scam but a Vodaphone one which was very similar. I received a text saying that my last months payment had not been processed. Would I click on a web address to sort out. Luckily I knew that there was no reason for the bill not being paid so I tried to contact Vodaphone to ask about the text. Why is it so hard to find customer support? It took me 1/2hr of making my way through numerous chats numbers that were automated and didn’t have a section for fraud. Finally a nice lady from Ayrshire told me that it was definitely a scam as I was up to date with payments.
You have to be pretty sharp and borderline paranoid to spot these scams. I was lucky.

I agree with Anne Mitchell. If any organisation, including any government department, want me to report possible scam emails they’ve got to make it quick and easy to do. I’ve got better things to do with my time than a) replying to email addresses only to find when I click ‘Send’ that they are unattended email addresses, b) listening to absolutely awful canned music interspersed every ten seconds by recorded “We apologise for the delay” messages until the handset battery expires, c) getting no response on the rare occasions when I succeed in sending a message, and d) hearing about banks, building societies, and large on-line sales organisations such as google and ebay taking virtually no action for months on end to prevent fraudulent activity.

I’ve had phishing emails from BT, Paypal, Nat west and others. These all look very genuine with logos and the name of actual employees, far more official than ones in the past. Where I can I forward these to the companies Phishing section but not every company seems to be helpful in this way. I have spoken to Which about this, but as with most of my comments they seem disregarded. I feel this is a major issue that Which should investigate. The emails are so realistic and frequent I have decided that I will ignore all emails from companies and only reply to phone messages or an old fashioned letter.

I picked up a ‘phone call this morning from a person with extremely poor English asking about my £600 charge not to Visa, but my debit card. I told her that she was in a call centre and I could not understand her because of the ‘background noise’. She hung up!

I had two scams the other day. One email from British Gas asking me to reset my password. I’ve moved to BG after the demise of Ebico. Ive ignored.
One from Glasgow (0141 611 8778) on my mobile with IR demanding money from back taxes. Hung up

I’ve had at least three recent calls saying my bank account is about to be debited £79 by Amason and if I didn’t want it to go ahead to press 1. Was quite scared by the first call as I have never wanted to sign up to Amazon Prime but it is very difficult to avoid doing so when purchasing items on their site. I ignored the calls but I would like Which? to take Amazon to task about their site design to make the joining sections clearer, less easy to click on by mistake. Prime takes a monthly amount from ones bank account, towards offers and postage reduction even if one has not bought anything in that month. OK for buyers of multiple goods, a rip off for the occasional purchase. The most recent call/scam refers to persons receiving scam calls and they’d like to help! I said I had heard of this and had always put the phone down on scammers. She muttered, “O you know about scams” and then rang off. A new slant on the usual chat up but many will be taken in. I wish these calls could be mentioned at the end of news reports or a t least have a section on the morning TV shows.