How to spot a scam email

I was recently talking to a parent who had recently been scammed over the phone by someone claiming to be from his bank. Now this person is well educated person and extremely careful with money but this person was convinced by the scammer and ended up losing over £5000. He is in the process of trying to recover this money from the bank and they may turn around to him and say its not their problem. He is extremely embarrassed of the situation and cannot believe that he fell for the scam.

I receive plenty of these scam calls, texts and emails every week. Some claim to be from banks, Sky TV, Virgin, The Police, HMRC, Microsoft and Amazon. In this article I will show you an example of a scam text and show some ways to identify its a scam.

The Scam Text

Below is a text message I received a few weeks ago, I immediately knew it was a scam, there were four things which gave it away immediately. How many of these four can you identify.

How to tell its a Scam

How many factors did you spot, here are the four things I noticed:

1. The sent from displayed a mobile phone number and not a company name
2. The message was sent at 4:15am on Sunday morning, companies would not send text messages at 4:15am especially on a Sunday
3. It mentions the 31st of April, yet April only has 30 days
4. The domain name (website address) doesnt even mention Royal Mail. If a message was from Royal mail, it would contain the domain name royalmail.com 

Other ways to identify scams

There are a couple of other factors that may help you identify scams

1. Sometimes scam emails have poor spelling and grammar, so if you see a message from what you believe to be a reputable company but it contains spelling and grammar errors, its likely to be a scam
2. If the message is informal and begins with Hi and without your name, it could be a scam. Although if they use your name, does not necessarily mean its a legitimate message.
3. Never click on these links, something the links are unique to you and if you are someone who clicks the message, they may identify you as someone who is likely to be caught out by one of these scams in the future.
4. If you are being made to do something immediately. For example fix this in the next two hours or your fine will be doubled. A reputable company will never make you do something within the space of a few hours.
5. If you are unsure of anything, share with someone you know and trust that is tech savvy and ask for their opinion.
6. If you are unsure, ignore the message, and don't click anywhere. If it was really important, they would send you a letter.