So I’ve nearly just been suckered in by what I think is a Scam Text.
I’m expecting a couple of parcels this week, and I just this morning got a text from Royal Mail, stating they’ve just missed me and to rearrange delivery
The text looked like a royal mail text, and it even had a tracking number that looks like a royal mail tracking number, and has similar wording from text’s RM have sent me before.
So I click the link and I get an almost identical clone of the Royal Mail mobile site. I go through the book a redelivery page, and eventually it asks for a “redelivery fee” of £1.80. I’ve paid fees before through Royal Mail, so initially sounded logical, but then I’ve never paid for something to be redelivered.
Are you familiar with 7726? Last time I had a phishing text I was recommend to report it to there. Copy/paste the text to 7726, and then it’ll follow up asking to send the number it was sent from as well.
Actual LOL at the ParcelID, which is supposed to be their attempt at a randomly generated string, but is clearly the result of a keyboard smush.
I’ve had fake parcel emails before myself, never texts. Luckily I’ve never fallen for any of them yet as they usually come in when I’m not expecting any parcels, so know they’re wrong uns. I think the one time I did get one when I was expecting something, I didn’t click the link and went to the courier’s website, and it didn’t recognise the tracking number. So I knew it was fake rather than the parcel I was expecting.
Today I had an obvious scam text about a tax rebate, but also a genuine email from HMRC a about the upcoming change in my tax code for 2021-22, which I clocked about five minutes later. Had I seen the email first, and been the kind of person susceptible to clicking on unsolicited texts, I can imagine thinking the text message looked genuine.
You can tell how people get themselves in a mess, and it terrifies me that my parents (or I) could be just a brain-fart away from being scammed.
It’s probably time for the UK to start requiring ID for the issue of mobile numbers so they’re linked to someone personally. Keeping it all technically anonymous leads to this…
That’s not really the issue though. The issue mainly stems from all of the services that dish out UK mobile numbers.
I think every number should be tied to a specific person or company when it’s in use so that this kind of problem can be avoided by means of prosecution.
That being said I don’t think it would work because it’s all cat and mouse. If UK numbers became verified, they’d just switch to using other countries readily available virtual numbers.
I had this email yesterday - it persuaded me to tell HMRC to send me letters instead
I know they are trying to be secure, but the email is so vague I thought it was phishing
It’s a the legitimate three domain that was allowing for a seamless redirect to anything after the //, the sim is a 3 PAYG not contract one so I knew it had to be fake , but took me a minute to see why, if someone with a contract would have asked me if it was real I’d have said yes.
I emailed them and they fixed it within a few hours.
