Scam Warning: Winter Fuel Payment

Report it here:

Done, thanks :-)

Just a small addition: your email client will have a means of showing you the entire email as sent, which may include clues to the origin of the email which you normally wouldn't see. The means will include the word 'source', and will often be a 'Message Source' entry under the 'View' menu. Copy and paste the entire page displayed and send it or paste it.

An email 'Forward' button will not usually forward any attachments, which may be very important, and often contain the actual URL where the mail will be sent. Any email addresses in headers are certain to be forged.

There is also an email address for reporting this kind of thing:

snipped-for-privacy@phishing.gov.uk

Unfortunately SMSs have no such metadata. 🙄

Even Outlook? (Which an employer might insist on using, and also insist that you check external emails for suspicious signs).

Double click the message, so that it opens in a separate window, file/properties, then select the contents of the internet properties field, copy it and paste it wherever ...

On Outlook you can mouseover the email address for the true email address of the sender and right-click the email body for the source. What troubles me is people who do their email on a tablet - maybe it is the same for email on the phone as well, I don't know, but people I know who email via a tablet claim there's no way to mouseover and that looks very dangerous to me.

Nick

Yes, outlook will show you the entire message source. It will also allow you to forward it as an attachment, so preserving the message.

However isn't this ¨report a spam e-mail just there so you "feel" someone is checking on these things. In fact they are just ignored?

Dave G4UGM

You do receive a 'thank you' email, but of course that may be all that happens. This *is* the government, after all.

For the information of anyone who receives a similar communication by text or email - Winter Fuel Payment DOES NOT need to be claimed.

Anything that suggests otherwise is ALWAYS going to be a scam, the recipient should NEVER click on any link in such messages.

Some people need to claim

That is not totally correct. If you have deferred your pension, or if you do not receive a qualifying benefit, but are old enough to qualify you need to claim. See the following for details:-

Dave G4UGM

"Internet headers" not "internet properties", so not the entire email.

But that does not give the entire email (missing headers).

One email was recently sent out including "this is not a phishing attempt and does not need reporting" after a previous one on the same topic with a wide distribution looked highly suspicious.

Thanks Dave (and alan_m). That wasn't mentioned in any of the news announcements I heard, and it does restrict the claim obligation to a very limited number of recipients. However I suppose it provides the hook that the scammers bait their messages with.

Jim

No, to get those depends on which outlook. Details here:-

Dave

Adding those words would make it look twice as suspicious.

The local Police have just sent me an e-mail:

| Dear resident, Today, Get Safe Online has launched a new scam | detection tool on their website. If you are suspicious of a text, | email or message and you want to check if it is legit or not before | responding, you can upload it to Ask Silver on the Get Safe Online | website and whereupon it will return an indication of whether the | communication is safe or a ‘red flag’ for fraud. This can be accessed | here:Ask Silver

"Powered by AI". Sounds awful. What could possibly go wrong?