Reply to: Scam alert !

[SueEllen]

Actually its shocking how bad some of the scammers are. With all the money they are making you would have thought they would get someone to improve the approach. Maybe that is a growth area someone can attack?

They know if you are foolish enough to fall for them, then you won't be canny enough to track them down.

[vetran]

Sounds like a Plan B opportunity for someone on here with good tech skills lol

Mate of mine used to optimise platforms for dirty chat and porn, very lucrative if you like being paid in Brown envelopes.

[Whorty]

Actually its shocking how bad some of the scammers are. With all the money they are making you would have thought they would get someone to improve the approach. Maybe that is a growth area someone can attack?

Sounds like a Plan B opportunity for someone on here with good tech skills lol

[vetran]

I had a few of those, and each time stayed on the line to have some fun with the idiot. The funny thing is I was always then asked, in a strong indian accent, why was I calling? Instead of putting me through to someone who pretends to be from HMRC to take payment for the "debt". Perhaps they have multiple scam messages and expect the scammed to report which one they are interested in being scammed by - a real slick operation.

Actually its shocking how bad some of the scammers are. With all the money they are making you would have thought they would get someone to improve the approach. Maybe that is a growth area someone can attack?

[willendure]

Received a recorded call off HMRC yesterday ... seems I'm in big doo-doo and owe a lot of tax. Thankfully the nice recorded message put me straight and gave me a way to clear the debt ... phew ... that was a close call

I had a few of those, and each time stayed on the line to have some fun with the idiot. The funny thing is I was always then asked, in a strong indian accent, why was I calling? Instead of putting me through to someone who pretends to be from HMRC to take payment for the "debt". Perhaps they have multiple scam messages and expect the scammed to report which one they are interested in being scammed by - a real slick operation.

[Whorty]

If they offered the framework I am sure the big boys such as governments and British Gas would implement it. Insuring business domains and bank accounts is the best way to cut fraud. If it asks you to transfer money but limits you to £100 unless you give a pee sample there would be a lot less fraud.

With my prostate, they'd only let me take out a tenner at a time!

[vetran]

In theory I agree, but in practice maybe not so easy given there are 200 (?) countries in the world all with their own specific government sites, plus the millions of official company sites .... so not that easy for Google/MS/AskJeeves to filter out.

If they offered the framework I am sure the big boys such as governments and British Gas would implement it. Insuring business domains and bank accounts is the best way to cut fraud. If it asks you to transfer money but limits you to £100 unless you give a pee sample there would be a lot less fraud.

[d000hg]

In theory I agree, but in practice maybe not so easy given there are 200 (?) countries in the world all with their own specific government sites, plus the millions of official company sites .... so not that easy for Google/MS/AskJeeves to filter out.

If people complain about a domain that quickly flags specific cases. And Google have local teams in most countries doing this sort of localised work - but the level of actually useful ML/AI they have these days it seems like they could get a lot of it - just think how good GMail spam detection is.

Probably quite an interesting area to work in, the never-ending fight as scammers come up with new tricks.

[Whorty]

It's surprising how easy it is to almost get fooled even if you are quite savvy, if you don't explicitly check every single link before clicking you can very easily get tricked in a moment of distraction.
I agree that browsers could/should do routine checks for pages like BritishGas.co.ukbillpaying or whatever, which seems to be the common ruse used these days. Or if the link text looks like xxx.gov.uk and the actual link is xxx.gov-123rrr.uk.

In theory I agree, but in practice maybe not so easy given there are 200 (?) countries in the world all with their own specific government sites, plus the millions of official company sites .... so not that easy for Google/MS/AskJeeves to filter out.

[d000hg]

Its about time most browsers added a check if they are government sites or insured businesses.

Most people aren't experts.

It's surprising how easy it is to almost get fooled even if you are quite savvy, if you don't explicitly check every single link before clicking you can very easily get tricked in a moment of distraction.
I agree that browsers could/should do routine checks for pages like BritishGas.co.ukbillpaying or whatever, which seems to be the common ruse used these days. Or if the link text looks like xxx.gov.uk and the actual link is xxx.gov-123rrr.uk.

[Whorty]

Received a recorded call off HMRC yesterday ... seems I'm in big doo-doo and owe a lot of tax. Thankfully the nice recorded message put me straight and gave me a way to clear the debt ... phew ... that was a close call

[SueEllen]

Its about time most browsers added a check if they are government sites or insured businesses.

Most people aren't experts.

And it will quickly be faked.

[vetran]

Its about time most browsers added a check if they are government sites or insured businesses.

Most people aren't experts.

[Paddy]

Anything from HMG is .gov.uk

Yes, but hyperlinks can be renamed, and the average Joe may not know what URL he is using.

[NigelJK]

Anything from HMG is .gov.uk