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No matter how careful people are about their personal details, phishers have no qualms about trying to get them from you. We explain how to stay safe online
I was issued with an email address when I joined AOL and use it only for friends, family and recognised companies, such as Paypal and Barclaycard. Since I changed my phone line to AOL, which required me to set up a new router, I have had some fraudulent emails.
I have also been contacted by telephone (I am ex-directory and registered not to receive marketing calls) by a free claims service. The emails ask for passwords and other account details.
One email, claiming to be from Paypal, convinced me that it was genuine because it asked me to update my account details as my card was due to expire soon, which was true. I have become suspicious because these emails claim to be from firms that I have used in the past.
Kathleen Burke
Although we usually cover cases where we can act as a mediator, Mrs Burke’s concerns are extremely valid.
She found it odd that she started receiving phishing emails and phone calls after the change-over of her phone service. She was concerned that her data had been leaked by a breach within AOL.
There are incidents of personal details being handed over by call centre staff, but we need to get some perspective on the problem. Phishing emails (which try to trick recipients into revealing personal details) are becoming highly sophisticated.
However, the criminals behind these emails don’t target people individually; they use clever social-engineering tactics, such as claiming an account needs updating. Send the email to enough people and the law of averages ensures they will get this right in a number of cases, as Mrs Burke discovered.
As for the phone calls, lists are sold to companies so they can make phone calls and send text messages about accident and debt claims.
The Office of Fair Trading is investigating this issue, but the information for these calls is unlikely to have come from AOL. We urge people to be wary both online and over the phone about what personal information they give out.
Take a look at the Staying Safe Online website, which deals with online safety, but the same tips apply to unsolicited phone calls.
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some years ago when I didnt know nothing about computers,my late wife wanted a computer,so agreed to one,and not knowing anything about them,was just clicking on icons to see what they were,clicked on the AOL icon and of course it was the set-up one,it loaded and just couldnt get it off the screen not knowing what it was,so asked my wife to come and have a look,she was delighted as it was an internet company to get on line within minutes she was on line and got everything set-up,but we were getting the same as the above says,so checked over the aol site and guess what,there r hundreds of know virus,s/scam e.mails attached to their site,e.mailed them about it,and the responce was nil,so changed isp to something different and everything changed overnite,no scam e.mails and no attacks,just get rid of aol as nearly everybody who I asked at the time said forget aol it nothing but a pack of trouble,have treid various others since but found the best was plusnet,inc phone
Posted by edgar Mills, 05 Mar 2012
Paypal is beng used by scammers, too.
That PayPal scam seems to be common nowadays because I also got a similar email apparently from PayPal. Said the credit card I have on file has expired. What bothered me was that there was nowhere in that email to tell me if the email was fraudulent because everything in there looked legit. I have received a few emails from PayPal, having set up a PayPal account, and compared it with the spam one and sure enough, they're simply similar. I could never tell. The tip-off was that I used a different email address for my PayPal account and it's impossible for PayPal to send me a notification through an email add which I didn’t have on their system. I checked at the bottom of the spam email, got the phone number and looked it up online.
Posted by William Mosier, 16 Mar 2012