Hello again,
Before you read on, please note that this scam is more relevent to people in the UK. However I bet they try simular scams in other countries.
Not long ago, I put a post up about a bitcoin scam which to be honest seemed fairly obvious in a way. Had they put a smaller amount like. 0.001 BTC (Bitcoin) it would of been more believable. By the way 0.001 BTC is about £12.35 at the time of this post.
Normally I don't fall for these. I'm fairly good with telling a scam appart from a legit source and it's just as well because there's nothing I wouldn't do to these people if I somehow caught them.
But today I almost fell for another scam. The F*ckers nearly got me!
This scam came in the form of an email. An email from "the goverment" as a reminder that my vehicle tax needed renewing.
"That's odd", I thought. "Normally I get a letter through the post."
But I also recall "opting out" of post deliveries to save paperwork from building up so this threw me off a little.
I clicked on the link which seemed a little fishy and what popped up was identicle to the uk.gov website. They even have a "report scams/phishing" at the bottom to make you feel more secure about the page you are on and give you a false sense of security.
So I entered in a vehicle reg and this pops up.
If you then click on "Tax your vehicle now" there's a form on the next page to fill out all your details. Name, d.o.b, address and right at the bottom...card details.
Nope. I don't think so.
Instead, I went on Google and searched for the real .gov website.
This was almost identical to the scam. They'd got it down to a T. Even the font was similar.
But they asked me for a form I didn't have. A V11 form which you usually recieve by post. Another red flag.
So I searched "DVLA vehicle tax" and tried my luck.
DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency)
This was much better,now we're getting somewhere.
Here we go again
After a few sub menus and text links I found the "enter your registration number" page.
So I did.
Bingo! I knew it! Although I was right that my tax is coming up soon which is the whole reason I nearly got reeled in on this scam.
I've reported the email to the uk "phishing" agency which you can do by forwarding a suspicious email to [email protected]
Don't just delete it, that does nothing.
There are thankfully companies that deal with scammers which may even be able to get whatever you've lost back but scammers know this and they even pretend to be these kind of organisations so be careful.
If you recieve a suspicious email or link don't open it. But if you feel like you have to like in my case when I knew the tax renewal was coming up, Then look out for spelling errors and bad punctuation. More often then not english is their second language so it can be quite easy to spot.
It's a shame these people exist as they can potentially ruin an individuals lifetime of hard work.
However because of these low lives, people are coming up with new ways to keep users safe on the enternet such as Two step verification. Another thing I thought was a scam but turns out it's really not.
What is two step verification? Perhaps I'll wright another post on it if anyone's interested but for now thanks for reading and be safe out there.
