The email arrives – it’s a “Notice of intended Prosecution”.

Oh dear!

The email sender knows my name unlike most scammers.

The email does have a company name and logo for Chariot car parks but the sender’s email address is a misspelling charoitcarparks.com which gives it away immediately as a scam.

It says I was illegally parked in a private parking space and caused great inconvenience to the owner of the parking spot.

It doesn’t specify a date or time for the incident but says it occurred on Self road near Chancery road.

Perhaps those are common street names randomly chosen by the scammer.

I have until the end of the month to pay £108 or the fine will be doubled and I will be prosecuted, supposedly.

There is a link to click to pay the fine and perhaps some people just pay without thinking about whether they actually ever parked in such a spot.

There is a box labelled Vehicle Registration which is blacked out and it says Click to Reveal

What the scammer really wants is for you to click that link. Obviously it makes no sense for the owners registration to be blacked out as it is their car.

The link leads to a fake website that will infect your computer with malware.

Never click a link in an unsolicited email and always take time to consider any worrying emails or texts before reacting.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.