Heads up

[Treefrog]

I just received this in an e-mail and thought I'd better share it.

The Trading Standards Office are making people aware of the following scam:

A card is posted through your door from a company called (PDS Parcel Delivery Service) suggesting that they were unable to deliver a parcel and that you need to contact them on 0906 6611911 (a premium rate number). DO NOT call this number, as this is a mail scam originating from Belize.

If you call the number and you start to hear a recorded message you will already have been billed £15 for the phone call. If you do receive a card with these details, then please contact Royal Mail Fraud on 02072396655 or ICSTIS (the premium rate service regulator) at www.icstis.org.uk

Hope no-one has been caught out already.

[Mark]

I just received this in an e-mail
And, though I certainly appreciate the heads up, unfortunately the problems start right there. It's a chain e-mail, and an old one at that, and this particular one seems to have gone viral. I've seen it everywhere (including displayed in post offices).

No-one, and I repeat, absolutely no-one, can charge you £15 just for phoning any UK phone number. The maximum call charge for an 090 number is £1.50 per minute.

The PDS scam itself, however, is genuine. The problem is it happened in 2005. It works by getting you to ring an 090 number and then playing an automated message that plays social engineering tricks to keep you on the line as long as possible (upwards of six minutes).

The best advice I can give is that if you receive a 'failed delivery notice' through your door from any company, and they want you to ring an 090 number to arrange delivery of your parcel, then throw the notice in the bin.

[Mark]

Aye - it's sorta true - and definitely worth being on your guard in the run-up to Christmas.

[Matblack]

If in doubt

http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/pds.asp

MB

[MarcLister]

our HR department decided this was important enough to send to everyone last week. All 50 gazillion employees got this. Twice.;D Did anyone have the balls to tell off HR then? That must have slowed the network down a bit? Like the time an Aussie who worked at my school sent very large copies of pictures he'd taken on a trip somewhere to the EVERYONE email address. He didn't realise until people he didn't "send" the email to were moaning about the size of the pictures. He only wanted to send it to a few people. :o

[Belmit]

My dad received this message, sent to a lot of very high up people in P&G, asking whether it should be put up on the staff message board to warn them. There then followed a few replies from others saying they thought it was a good idea. My dad didn't have time to look into it so forwarded it to my mum at home, who looked it up on snopes and almost immediately mailed my dad back to tell him it was cobblers.

My dad sent a reply to all saying something along the lines of 'I'm glad my wife's on the ball because you lot ruddy aren't!'.

[MarcLister]

ROFL ;D

[Feek]

We used to get muppets (usually salesmen) forwarding these out. I generally replied and told them that they're stupid. They tend to send them direct to me now asking if they're genuine or not so my insulting behaviour did the trick.

[Garp]

I took an alternative approach at my first workplace and with an agreement from my boss informed all staff that they were not to forward on any e-mails to the entire staff list without my (or his) permission. He would always defer to me on anything like this style message or technical ones. I warned people in the initial e-mail I sent out that I would start publicly responding to mass e-mails rather than direct to the individuals, pointing out how it was a fake, if they e-mailed the staff mailing list.

They soon learnt. I think I ended up embarrassing three members of staff, again with my bosses direct approval (making myself bomb proof ;)) then folks learned to check with me first.

[Feek]

Direct insults are more fun though.

[Garp]

Direct insults are more fun though.

True, but at the time I was 18 / 19, and the youngest in the company, so directly insulting people would have been a job limiting move!

[Stelly]

Thanks for the info :)

Stelly