Warning over phishing email that includes your home address
The believable new scam email will demand hundreds of pounds. Here's how to spot it.
There’s a new phishing email doing the rounds that claims you owe hundreds of pounds to genuine UK firms. To make it seem even more authentic, the mail includes your actual home address.
Here's what you need to know and how to stay safe.
The email
The email contains personal details like your full name and home address and demands a payment of more than £800 to clear a debt with legitimate companies.
These include a waxed cotton manufacturer British Millerain Co Ltd located in Rochdale and a shelving firm called Greenoaks based in Manchester.
The email also has a link to the 'original invoice where presumably you will find the details of where to send the cash, but actually could install malware on your device.
Members of the BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours team are among those who have been targeted by this new wave of fraudulent activity. They have posted a version of the email that reporter Shari Vahl received, which you can see below.
Vahl said: "The email has good spelling and grammar and my exact home address...when I say exact I mean, not the way my address is written by those autofill sections on web pages, but the way I write my address.
"My tummy did a bit of a somersault when I read that, because I wondered who on earth I could owe £800 to and what was about to land on my doormat."
Worryingly, at least two other members of Vahl’s team also reported receiving a similar email.
The You and Yours team contacted the companies named in the emails staff had received, who said they had been inundated with calls from people worried they owed them money.
Hackers
Dr Steven Murdoch, principle research fellow at the department of computer science at University College London, reckons the scam could actually be the result of a hack.
He told You and Yours: "Most likely it was a retailer or other internet site that had been hacked into and the database stolen, it then could have been sold or passed through several different people and then eventually it got to the person who sent out these emails."
Murdoch also said the email had hallmarks of phishing attempts from gangs in Eastern Europe and Russia and warned clicking the link could install malware like Cryptolocker, which is a type of ransomware that locks files on Windows-based computers and demands a fee to release them.
What to do if you get this email
If you’ve received a suspicious email don’t click the link or take any notice of the demands.
Instead just delete it from your inbox and report it to Action Fraud. You can do this over the phone on 0300 123 2040 or using its online fraud reporting tool.
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