Scam Alert

It would seem that scams are on the rise.

The most common ways in which fraudsters attempt to steal money or personal details are via fake emails, text messages and phone calls.

A Haddenham resident received a strange phone call yesterday morning, supposedly from a local number that he didn't recognise (01844 229464) saying that there had been two suspicious payments from his bank account, one of £700 to Amazon and one bank transfer of £2,000. The automated message instructed him to press 1 to authorise or 2 to speak to someone.

Thankfully, he hung up and reported the call to his bank and to OfCom.

We gather that another Haddenham resident received a similar call from a 01296 number. The use of sham local source numbers seems to be on the increase and has the potential to catch some people off guard.

An extensive investigation by The Times newspaper, published on Thursday 25th May, has highlighted the availability of stolen bank details readily available for purchase on the internet. Details such as a person's address, date of birth, credit or debit card details, bank account number, email address and sometimes other ID data are readily available and sold very cheaply.

These data have been obtained through a wide range of scams and then distributed to those who go on to use the information to steal from those whose data have been compromised.

The victims will have fallen for spam text or email messages and clicked through to sophisticated fake banking websites, into which they will have put their login details, allowing the fraudster to save them.

Or pressed a reply number in response to a scam phone call and entered personal details in order to stop an unauthorised payment but, in so doing, opened their wallets to the scammers.

Elderly folk are particularly vulnerable to such crimes and it is very important that younger family members and friends alert the most vulnerable to these activities and to give them the awareness to spot a scam early.

Here's an article that can help.