Amazon Scam?

I had an email supposedly from Sainsburys saying that following my recent shop, I had won a holiday voucher for £500 but I had to click on a link that day to activate it. I decided not to and forwarded the email to customer services. I did not get a reply and hope I did not miss out on £500!

I love winding up scam callers who claim to be from microsoft about my windows computer. I ask them which computer they mean - could it be my work one etc., waste as much time as possible sounding confused, then tell them I don't have a computer. The line quickly goes dead after that!

I get loads of similar e-mails referring to my Amazon, Paypal, Bank, etc. The amusing thing is that I have more than 1 e-mail account and they always go into the one Amazon etc. don't have. ?

I never use Amazon they don't pay their Taxes and treat staff badly and now have been shown to show incorrect pricind from rivals.

Beware rogue builders too. Two weeks ago a 'builder' and mate knocked on our door claiming that they had been working on a nearby roof from which they had a good view of our roof. They claimed we had cracked and loose tiles. They could 'fix' them for a small sum etc. DH was taken in by this and allowed them access to roof via loft bedroom but did not stay to check what they were doing. Coming down they wanted a considerable sum to 'hire' equipment. By then I was sure it was a scam and told them to leave. When WE examined the roof they had smashed and dislodged several tiles and damaged our neighbour's new ridge tiles.
We informed the police who have notes on the case and we are several £100 lighter having to find a bona fide builder. It was an unpleasant experience and we felt silly.

Thanks Anya for the delivery scam link!

Did any of you see this story not long ago about the Swedish lady who met her scammer? Interesting... she must have had some money to want to see this through and a lot of faith she could make a difference.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-37632259

Harmony22 Sadly, your wrong. The scammers and the fraudsters are always ahead of the game. The police and the security services know this. The problem is 'we' don't want to put more money towards stopping this.
My step daughter works in this field and what she tells me is scary.

Sadly I think the scammers find its more lucrative to do this than a proper job but it's great that there is a lot of publicity in the media these days, the scammers will hopefully find it much more difficult than in the past

There are also 'delivery from DHL or other courier' scam e mails doing the rounds. It's tempting to click on the link when you are actually expecting a parcel as you don't always know who the courier will be. Luckily for me it didn't affect my I-pad but a friend with a PC did the same and it was then infected by a ransomeware virus. She has lost all her files and photos and then money is demanded to restore them.

Also had one from (supposedly) Yahoo, saying this was my last chance to 'update' before my account was closed!!
Thanks for info., on all other scams.

I have had several identical supposedly Amazon emails. DO NOT OPEN - DELETE STRAIGHT AWAY !!

I long for the olden days, when the big worry was that someone might have pinched them milk off the door step, and we would have to go to work without a cup of tea.........the price we pay for convenience shopping is becoming too high.

PAYPAL and E bay are a law unto themselves.

I believe that the scammers' tactics are to send out thousands of emails ... but they only need one or two in thousand to fall for it and then it's all worthwhile to them.

I read somewhere that this type of cyber crime is taking over from the conventional types of fraud and robbery!

I was advised to forward (WITHOUT OPENING ANY LINKS) suspect e-mails to [email protected]
which gives the police some idea of the pattern of these fakes.

I was also told that my Amazon account would be shut down. I thought 'doesn't really matter, if I need it I will resubscribe'!

If you go to the BBC website FAQ page, it says that they are sending genuine emails. They just want you to re-register. If you register wth the BBC, you get a few bells ahd whistles, but there's no need to register if you don't want to

Just taken a call from "BT openreach" saying they have noted a fault with my router to their server. Would not answer any tecnical questions and when I said I wanted the problem put in writing for trading standards he hung up. Unavailable number and a new one for me, anyone else get this one?

I too had an e-mail purporting to be from PayPal saying " there has been some unusual activity on my account " . Oh really ? I don't have a PayPal account . I don't act on anything from these type of notices or phone calls , my children have warned me and there are enough warnings in the media.

I had a phone call yesterday with a recorded message saying it was from Barclaycard regarding fraud prevention. It gave me a number to ring but my husband suggested that instead I ring the number on the back of my credit card to check if it was genuine. Turned out it actually was! They were alerting me to the fact that my card had been found in a list of hacked numbers. They told me to destroy my card and are issuing me with a new one. This is what is so confusing about these scams. I always ignore email messages and am wary of phone calls but if I had ignored this I actually could have been a victim of fraud.

My scam was a totally different experience with Paypal. Money was being placed into my account for an Item that I had presumably placed to sell on Ebay. It amounted to over £300 before it was sorted out. I obviously never made any attempt to draw the money out and reported it straight away. They closed my account and it proved to be a very worrying time for me as it made me look as if I was the scammer. I have since changed all of my personal details on the advice given to me and use Paypal with greater caution now

Ignore all emails like that. Just go directly to your Amazon account (or whatever it is) and you'd soon find that it wasn't closed down at all!

Had similar from Talk Talk didn't click on the link and contacted talk talk. Sent the email on to them for investigation then deleted it.

I hate this sort of thing.

I often get these Amazon deactivation ones - if you know you haven't done it's a scam.

I lately have been inundated with scam and phishing email, mostly PayPal and HMRC but also Apple,Amazon, British Telecom, Netflix, Santander, eBay et al.

The HMCR emails tell you that you are entitled to a tax refund and to supply your bank details in order for the refund to be paid into your account.
The others mainly ask for verification of your bank/credit card details.

If you tap on the name of the sender, it will display their email address. You can immediately see that it is false (although some try to appear genuine by throwing, for example "paypal" in the address.

The most important things to remember is (1) Do NOT reply to the email.
(2) Do NOT open any attachments - these often contain malware and viruses.

Forward the email to the true company, for example:
[email protected]

You can always find the address on the relevant website - just type in "phishing" "scam" or "spoof" in the Search box.

The delivery scam I was talking about

I get lots of scam e-mails from "PayPal" - I send them directly to PayPal.

HMRC do not send e-mails or phone you regarding Tax matters unless you are already in correspondence with them (I used to work for HMRC) I do get e-mails from them occasionally promising rebates which are often badly spelt/bad grammer - again I forward to HMRC

Bank scams - so many from Banks I don't deal with

The way they address you & the grammer are often a give away -being addressed as "Dear Value Customer" ?????

I have "Caller Display" on my phone so I don't answer any calls from numbers I don't recognise, the ones that annoy me are where they withold the number - I cut them of as soon as I know it's a "cold caller" with a polite "not interested"