Results tagged “online fraud” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

'BE vigilant' is the only suggestion put forward following a new survey which shows how many people have been targeted by online fraudsters.

To be fair the sample size of the survey - 1,563 - is small, the results which had 77 per cent saying they had received 'phishing' emails seems to ring true.

I blogged about my own experiences recently, when I discovered that there is no real capacity in police forces to look into online fraud.

It's understandable, given your average force has enough on its' plate dealing with ordinary street crime.

Not to mention the fact that many of the criminals concerned don't even operate from the UK, and trying to track them down would require a phenomenal level of resources and international co-operation.

The survey also found seven out of 10 people said they had received emails asking for money, while 67 per cent had been told they had won a lottery or competition that did not exist, according to life assistance company CPP.

Around 17 per cent of those questioned said they had also received emails from people claiming to be acquaintances or relatives in a bid to con them into handing over money or revealing personal information.

An email dropped into my inbox to tell me my paypal account had been 'temporarily limited' due to 'several failed log-in attempts'.

It provided a link to log in correctly otherwise: 'If you fail to log in correctly your account will be suspended for fraud prevention.'

Ok I'm not entirely daft and it's an obvious phishing attempt so I forwarded it to the Paypal security centre at spoof@paypal.com

They duly came back and informed me that it was indeed an attempted fraud to get my paypal log in details.

A while ago I spotted something I'd been after for ages on the gumtree online classifieds site.

I got in touch with the seller who provided a host of pics of the item, seemingly genuine.