Avoiding Scams

Friday 3rd April 2020

We want to focus on safety and that whilst you are hopefully all safe at home, be aware of intrusion into your lives by the fraudsters who inevitably want to benefit from other's misery and fear. As at 20th March there was a 400% increase in scams as a result of coronavirus related fraud. Action Fraud reported figures of 105 cases since 1st February 2020 with total losses reaching nearly £970,000. Go to the Action Fraud web site for more information

Watch out for the following to help you keep safe:

• What are known as "phishing" emails, which try to get you to part with personal information and/or money. For example, one purports to be from the World Health Organisation (WHO), which says it would never ask you to pay money, donate to a charity, log in, download attachments or click a link.

• The majority of reports are related to online shopping scams where people have ordered protective face masks, hand sanitiser, and other products, which have never arrived.

• Always be very sceptical of any phone calls or door knockers claiming to be from the NHS, Police, Government or Charities; normally institutions that we would trust. Be aware of false offers to run errands for the elderly and vulnerable.

• Always install the latest software and app updates to protect your devices from the latest threats.

To help ensure data security clients of Bailey Cook can register for a free account with Unipass Mailock, which we highly recommend. This will mean that you will become part of our secure community, and once you have successfully answered your first identity challenge/text there is no need to do this again. Registering will also allow you to reply to us securely, once again for free. One advantage we see for us and yourselves is that documents can be emailed to you which allows you to save them to your computer rather than have large bundles of paperwork.