Author: comptroller

August 26, 2019

The Fake Marriage Rebate

There is a marriage allowance worth £250 that can be claimed from HMRC each year.

Marriage Allowance Limited has taken to sending out letters and emails to people advising them to get this rebate and they will do it for you. What they don’t tell people is that although the claim is free, the company charges 42% plus a processing fee and that doesn’t leave much of the rebate remaining to actually get to the tax payer.

Their website is designed to make people believe it is HMRC.

This activity is legal as they don’t explicitly claim to be from HMRC and the company runs similar operations targeting other tax allowances.

As always, read messages carefully to see who they are actually from, be careful with Google searches not to just pick the top of the list in case it’s an advert and the official site you want is lower down the list.

If you want to claim the marriage allowance, go to www.gov.uk/apply-marriage-allowance or call 0300 200 3300

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August 25, 2019

Stupidest Scam of the Week Free Dangerous Dog Food

There are endless scam emails, social media posts and websites telling you about ‘the one food you must never eat’, or ‘the three foods that are killing you’, or ‘this weird trick that will extend your life for decades’ etc.

Perhaps the market is saturated with this kind of drivel and scammers are looking for new markets to attract gullible people willing to part with their money for just a dumb promise.

Now, scammers are trying to extend this rubbish to pets.

“Your dog’s food may be shortening their life”.

“Most dog parents have no idea these ingredients are so harmful”.

“A leading veterinarian has exposed the Dog Health Destroyers hiding in their food”.

“ One simple trick that can make your dog thrive”.

These statements are copied from similar messages about human health and the message is from bettercablesky which is obviously an email address used previously for other purposes by the scammer.

Never believe this kind of stuff, whether it applies to humans or animals.

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August 24, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

Global Payments warn me I owe £972.53 for a parking service charge in somewhere called Wharles and that I should open the attached document to view the receipt. That’s quite a parking charge. What was it? – A Jumbo jet?

You might see adverts for Liporings also known as diet toe rings and acupressure toe rings. These are based on a strange idea that acupressure points can be stimulated by magnets and as there are such points on the toes that supposedly relate to digestion then wearing magnets around specific points on your toes can make you magically lose weight. There is no objective evidence for this but some believe it. There are some genuine sellers of these items abut also a lot of scammers who think it’s too good to miss out on selling non existent toe rings to gullible people.

American survivalists do produce adverts for the weirdest things and one latest scam is for survival gardens. “Do you have a survival garden that can produce an unlimited supply of food post collapse?”. If not then follow the link to find out how. No thanks.

Steve of realtargetedtraffic wants to sell me on how he can get visitors to my web site fast for less than $20. No thanks Steve. I’d rather have visitors who want to read my website than paid visitors who don’t care about the message or people tricked into accessing the site by some sort of clickbait.

Grandmother Mary Carter has amazed her friends for years – and the secret of her youthfulness of mind and body is in her blood. You too can take the same supplement that Mary takes and be free from aches and pains at any age. The email continues like this but is pointless as it’s just a scam. There is a world of supplements that can help people with their health and vitality but you shouldn’t respond to pathetic emails offering something magical as it’s always lies.

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August 23, 2019

Citizens Advice Scams Action Service

In 2018, Martin Lewis took legal action against Facebook for publishing scam adverts that used his image. A settlement was agreed which included funding a new Citizens Advice Scams Action service.

The service is intended to help support people who have been – or who might be impacted directly – by online scams.

It is to provide help for people through telephone, chat and website content and there can be face-to-face support for those who need it.

The Citizens Advice Scams Action can be contacted by phone on 0300 330 3003 or through the citizens advice website at https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/scams/reporting-a-scam/

Action

Once they got all the information needed, Citizens Advice will pass this to Trading Standards as they don’t investigate scams themselves.

Trading Standards gathers information about scams so they can take legal action against scammers and involve the Police where relevant.

This is a step forward in the battle against scammers.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

August 22, 2019

Big Increases in Identity Fraud

Identity theft is when someone collects enough information about you to pretend to be you in order to access your bank account, use your credit card details, open accounts in your name, take out loans in your name, block your access to your own accounts etc.

This is a very destructive form of fraud as it can be very difficult for the victim to prove it wasn’t them taking out the money and to get their identity back, including access to the various accounts.

UK Government statistics show almost 190,000 cases of identity fraud in a 12 month period with CIFAS (the fraud prevention service) recording increases of 8% per year.

The figures also show that levels for older people are rising faster, suggesting they are being targeted for this type of fraud.

Most people do not realise they have been a victim of identity fraud until bills start arriving and demands for repayment for loans they didn’t request.

To avoid becoming such a victim, you need to make sure you keep personal information to yourself – starting with setting social media network privacy levels to high, use strong passwords and never reveal passwords to anyone in emails or by phone.

Always be cautious of emails or websites or text messages offering anything too good to be true.

Stay safe.

If you have any experiences with identity theft, do let me know, by email.

August 21, 2019

Ted’s Woodworking Plans

You might be surprised that anyone would spend a lot of effort on trying to sell woodworking plans/shed making plans on the Internet, but one person or group determinedly put out hundreds emails per year to each person on their scam list, year after year.

Does she make any money at this?

Who knows but she keeps trying so maybe she does or maybe she’ll give up when the first ever sucker falls for the sales pitch.

The actual offer is for 16,000 wood working plans, which is a ridiculous number of plans.

She uses a set pattern of messages that keep repeating ad infinitum.

The first in the set is a straightforward sales pitch about how wonderful the woodworking plans are and how you can make anything you want with little effort and how people will be queuing up at your door to buy your wooden products. Obviously rubbish, as building serious woodworking skills takes years and years of effort and a good teacher.

The message is clear that the offer of all 16,000 woodworking plans is only for one day and will never be repeated.

The second email is titled something like “Bad News” then goes on to claim that there was so much demand for Ted’s woodworking plans that his server computer fell over but they’ve got it fixed so you can place your order NOW!.

Rubbish of course, but entertaining at least.

This email generally repeats for several days.

Then back to the beginning of the message set again the following week or sometimes there is a week or so gap then the restart.

Sometimes the main focus of the offer changes to be 12,000 shed plans which is more ridiculous than the first offer – who in their right mind would pay for 12,000 shed plans and who would ever put together such an overkill.

This time the main claim is that the instructions are so precise the sheds practically build themselves.

Can you image a shed building itself? – not an easy thought except for a mad scammer.

The messages come from random name email accounts such as ducatric411op9opw21asd.icu

Whoever is sending out this drivel is filling the world with rubbish.

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