The email from ‘BTINTERNET’ that tells me my broadband is going to be cut off arrived at 6.53am yesterday.
It said I did not pay my bill and ignored all reminders. If I wanted to prevent my service from being suspended, I had to click on a link and follow the verification and payment procedures.
Even though I was still half asleep, I could immediately see that it was obviously a scam. And also not a very good one.
The fact that the email was titled: ‘Massage from BT’ was a dead giveaway. It went straight into the trash.
The next one, from Norton Security, was much more professional. It contained an account for renewal of my annual anti-virus software contract. For a moment, I almost clicked on it – until I remembered that I was not using Norton software.
Then I turned on my iPhone to get an SMS informing me that Adam from the Post Office had tried to deliver a parcel to my house, but no one was there to sign for it. There were directions to a website where I could arrange for it to be delivered again.
I spotted this one right away. There were several of these scams that washed around last year, pretending to come from UPS, FedEx and the like, all of which asked for a small payment to guarantee the safe arrival of goods ordered online.
During confinement, with everyone relying on home deliveries, many people fell for it only to discover that they were the victim of an online robbery.
I have to get dozens of these fake emails and text messages every week. Most of them are intercepted by my junk filter, but some still slip under the radar.
So I was not surprised to learn from the Mail’s investigation team that Britain is now the world’s capital fraud, with losses amounting to almost £ 3 billion a year.
I became wise for this kind of scam eight years ago when my identity was stolen. I returned from vacation to get a package with a brand new Apple laptop waiting for me. It was taken over by a builder who was doing work on the house while we were away.
The receipt said it had been purchased by me at the Apple Store a few days earlier. I knew I had not ordered it and there were no recent purchases on my real Apple account.
My own bank manager reassured me that my account or credit card had not been hacked and that there was no unusual activity.
When I called Apple, they said it was ordered by ‘Richard Littlejohn’ using a fake email address and a personal financial loan from Barclays. Since I’m not at Barclays bank, I assured them it’s not me, so they can send someone to pick it up.
As I flipped through the usual pile of junk mail that arrived while we were away, I received a letter from Barclays welcoming me to my new partner financing account informing me that my monthly repayment of £ 99.99 was now due and debit will be taken. .
Eventually, I came across a woman at Barclays customer service and discovered someone had appropriated my name, address, and date of birth, along with a company directorship I held. Not difficult as it was a matter of public record.
However, how could they open an account in my name without further proof of identity, such as a passport or driver’s license? She did not want to tell me, hiding behind the conspicuous excuse of ‘data protection’.
Barclays did agree to close the account and report it to their fraud team. When I asked to be passed on to the fraud team, the woman said they do not take calls from the public. Presumably they wrote off the fake loan.
I had a hell of a job persuading Apple to take back the laptop, which then sold for £ 999. It seems that large banks and corporations have not bothered to pursue fraud under £ 1,000.
Or at least they did not in 2014. The cutoff point could have doubled by now, for all I know.
How this particular scam worked was that the crooks would locate the parcel online and then intercept the delivery company at the front gate and pretend to be the homeowner. In my case, the builder beat them and they were left empty-handed.
But since the fraudsters need to know they stand little chance of being caught, they would also have written off the loss of the laptop as an occupational hazard.
Online fraud has become much more sophisticated since those early emails from Nigeria promising you a fat commission if you had them transfer £ 5 million to your bank account for safekeeping.
The police never bother to investigate car crime or burglary, why would they lift a finger to look for a fraudster who stole my identity and tried to steal a laptop that is less than a great value ?
No wonder the annual transport is about £ 3 billion a year and it seems to be rising relentlessly.
Law enforcement could not keep up.
Things were not much different eight years ago. Like any sincere citizen, I felt it was my duty to report the theft of my identity to the police.
On their dedicated fraud website, I was asked to fill out a multiple choice questionnaire. The only identities they were interested in were my sexual orientation, my ethnicity and, even then, whether I was still defined as the same gender I was when I was born.
Presumably, this process is even more extensive these days, now that there is an exciting variety of 1,001 generations to choose from. Of course, I refused to comply with their incompetent request, and that is probably why, after assigning a crime number to me, I never heard another word from them.
Maybe if I had filled out the form claiming I was trans or gay, they would have classified it as a ‘hate crime’ and scrambled a team of highly trained detectives with a helicopter.
Yet, since the police never bother to investigate car crime or burglary, why would they lift a finger to look for a fraudster who stole my identity and tried to steal a laptop that was less than a is worth rand?
Despite the fact that there are apparently 23 different institutions that have to tackle fraud, the police eventually admitted they are not doing enough.
Fraud is now responsible for 39 per cent of all crimes committed in Britain, but as the Mail revealed yesterday, only two per cent of police manpower is currently devoted to investigating it.
One of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary acknowledged that the number of officers involved in the hunt for scammers urgently needs to be tripled.
We are effectively being bullied by the big banks to do our banking online and millions of us, especially the younger generation, carry every last cough and spit of our identities on cell phones.
Two-thirds of Britain’s police forces have no specialist fraud officers and the overwhelming number of cybercrimes reported are filed under ‘no further action’.
And while the government is funding a recruitment campaign, most of those hired do not have the necessary skills to tackle online fraud and are better suited for general duties.
I can remember that the railways regularly blamed the cancellations on the ‘wrong kind of snow’. But I’ve never heard a senior police officer blame a failure to investigate crime on the wrong kind of buyer.
At least now, to be honest, the police have woken up to the scale of this cybercrime epidemic and are trying to get it addressed.
It does not help that we are effectively being bullied by the big banks to do our banking online and that millions of us, especially the younger generation, carry every last cough and spit of our identities on cell phones.
Until law enforcement catches up, the cyber scammers will remain one step ahead of the posts.
So it’s worthwhile to be extra vigilant when clicking on suspicious emails and texts, no matter how legal it may seem.
The internet is still in its infancy, a largely lawless landscape like the Wild West, with bad guys hiding behind every rock.
As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus warned his patrol officers every morning on the classic Hill Street Blues police program:
Let’s be careful out there.