I read on Ceefax that a new scam is for a courier to deliver a top of the range mobile phone to you, that you didn't order and have no knowledge of. A short while later, another courier calls at the door and apologises for delivering it to the wrong address and can he have it back please.
So how's that work as a scam? Is it that a few people might be tempted to start using the phone and load it with sensitive data, or what?
Ceefax?
If only there was some sort of computer database stuffed with news stories that one could search through... ;-)
Well, whatever the BBC replacement for it is. Red button?
It only works if they have enough stolen data about you to place the order in your name. They end up with the phone and you end up with the bill.
Ah, thanks. Life gets more worrying by the hour! As an aside, you're right to imply I could have looked for myself, but I never have much success searching the BBC web site. I find everything that I don't want to know, but seldom the thing I'm looking for.
Unfortunately pagesfromceefax has been hijacked by a domain squatter that wants me to install something on my PC.
Owain
Searching my local government website using the inbuilt search engine is simply horrendous - there are loads of hits, with no sensible ranking. Searching the same site using google works very nicely.
+1. The right thing to do, *immediately* on opening the parcel, is to contact the supplier and say "I didn't order this". They should then say to you "On no account give it to a doorstep caller, and they will probably suggest you print a freepost label and send it back to them.
Didn't Ceefax expire in 2012 when digital dot went down the plughole?
They get hold of the valuable phone if the surprised recipient is daft enough to give it to the second "courier" who arrives to reclaim it.
Similar scams target farmers with mailboxes at the end of their drive getting extra credit cards and the miscreants follow the postie round steal them and use them to the maximum credit limit. First thing the victim knows is that they have a big unexplained new credit card bill.
There was a spate of this sort of scam locally for small high value stuff usually delivered by normal mail and put into remote mailboxes.
Don't make the mistake of using the BBC's search facility to search the BBC website, use a search engine with "site:bbc.co.uk" as an extra term.
They have ordered it in your name using info stolen from you. They even setup bank accounts in your name and address.
By identity theft and getting the phone that they ordered using your details and having it in their hot little hands after it has been delivered, with you paying for it.
what.
The BBC "red button"/digital teletext "news delivery channel" is broken.
All the news articles need to have a summary in the first two paragraphs, and then the meat of the article afterwards.
The full article gets published on the website. Only the summary gets published via "the red button".
If the news article doesn't have a summary, or what would be described as a newspaper "feature" gets marked for "red button" publication (like this case), you end up with a redbutton news item which you read and then go "yeah, and?"
We've already passed the search horizon. There are web pages that are no longer returned by Google that are still there (coz I wrote them) after
20 years, but which are still available.It makes me wonder what else Google is missing. Or "missing" if you believe in bad intent ....
Suggesting a degree of culpability on the banks part ? How come scamsters appear to be able to open bank accounts at will, and genuine punters have to jump through all sorts of hoops and *still* get refused ....
It's possible that the phone suppliers might want to tighten their procedures up too.
So can you click on the "red button" and go to the website?
I guess the scammer then shifts it on to an unsuspecting buyer before the person who eventually gets the fraudulent bill jumps up and down and gets a charge back. Which hopefully gets sent by the card company to the seller who can then flag the phone as stolen and thus useless. Requires rather a lot of joined up thinking though. And of course the end punter loses out when the phone stops working and on complaining to the service provider tells them it's a stolen phone, get your money back from the seller...
You either don't own a TV, or you are taking the piss.
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