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One thing I did notice when the pandemic started was the number of companies who were obviously not GDPR compliant judging by the emails I was getting from companies I don't remember passing on my email details to and who should've deleted them a long time ago.

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Unfortunately they still exist, I know as I was caught out not long ago, and only a few days after completing, and passing, a ‘Cyber attack’ compliance module at work 🙄

The vast majority of dodgy emails usually go direct to my spam and are blatantly obvious, but a couple of weeks ago I received an email from Amazon. It referred to a change that I had actually made on my account only the day  before and wanted me to confirm it, it looked completely legit. I stupidly signed into my account using the link they provided and then realised something wasnt quite right.  
I immediately called my bank and cancelled the card that was saved on my amazon account, changed my amazon password and alerted them, and changed the password on any other accounts with the same password as my Amazon account. 
In the end no damage has been done but it was a load of hassle that could have been averted if I hadnt been so bloody stupid and just contacted Amazon first. 
I know you will all be thinking ‘ffs how thick is she’ but some of these emails are pretty professional.  Had they not referred to a change I had actually made I would immediately have been suspicious, as it happens it was a random coincidence.  

 

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I second Dave78's link - there is quite an increase in these at the minute - as well as "fake" phone calls from "BT engineer", "Tax office" etc telling you to return the call etc.

Most common just now are fake Amazon and fake "Aldi" vouchers as well as stuff claiming to be Tv licensing - these are generally more literate than the actual e-mails you get from Tv licensing 😄

Cybersecurity courses and the like tend to tell you that the fakes are poorly spelt and or use odd looking contact links - in my experience they are now more often than not as good if not better than genuine communications - Banks in particular are still sending out emails with embedded links in them - and they often make spelling mistakes. and use dodgy looking domains to send from.

Both Paypal and Virgin media fairly recently sent out what looked like spam mail - in both cases they themselves weren't initially sure if the addresses were real or not (left hand not talking to right hand) and Barclays bank actually reported themselves to themselves for spam mail at one point.....

Tyder - even though you probably nipped that in the bud so to speak, watch for an increase in that kind of nonsense as once they get a confirmed "live" address it gets passed around. I have an older e-mail address that I still keep active for a few things, that still gets a lot of spam due to some of it's details being revealed when Sony had their accounts compromised a few years ago (that's happened a few times to them in particular - Sony are only surpassed in my experience by Apple for being a shit company to deal with if you work in IT - and I'm Apple certified 😋 ).

As you yourself realised after the fact - never use embedded links in any email - not even genuine ones - in fact if you can be bothered report them as spam to the issuer as they really need to break the habit of doing this nonsense.

Also if you aren't already doing so then use two factor authentication on everything- yes it's  pain getting texts to phones or whatever , but it makes things a lot more secure.

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27 minutes ago, Lobey said:

I second Dave78's link - there is quite an increase in these at the minute - as well as "fake" phone calls from "BT engineer", "Tax office" etc telling you to return the call etc.

Most common just now are fake Amazon and fake "Aldi" vouchers as well as stuff claiming to be Tv licensing - these are generally more literate than the actual e-mails you get from Tv licensing 😄

Cybersecurity courses and the like tend to tell you that the fakes are poorly spelt and or use odd looking contact links - in my experience they are now more often than not as good if not better than genuine communications - Banks in particular are still sending out emails with embedded links in them - and they often make spelling mistakes. and use dodgy looking domains to send from.

Both Paypal and Virgin media fairly recently sent out what looked like spam mail - in both cases they themselves weren't initially sure if the addresses were real or not (left hand not talking to right hand) and Barclays bank actually reported themselves to themselves for spam mail at one point.....

Tyder - even though you probably nipped that in the bud so to speak, watch for an increase in that kind of nonsense as once they get a confirmed "live" address it gets passed around. I have an older e-mail address that I still keep active for a few things, that still gets a lot of spam due to some of it's details being revealed when Sony had their accounts compromised a few years ago (that's happened a few times to them in particular - Sony are only surpassed in my experience by Apple for being a shit company to deal with if you work in IT - and I'm Apple certified 😋 ).

As you yourself realised after the fact - never use embedded links in any email - not even genuine ones - in fact if you can be bothered report them as spam to the issuer as they really need to break the habit of doing this nonsense.

Also if you aren't already doing so then use two factor authentication on everything- yes it's  pain getting texts to phones or whatever , but it makes things a lot more secure.

Thanks for the info Lobey, I have to say I am still a wee bit concerned as I am lazy with passwords and tend to use the same ones. I was totally distracted when I did it , felt like an idiot. 
I did report the email to Amazon so hopefully they can do something with it. I dont know how sophisticated these scammers are. 


 

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