It has been brought to our attention that over the last few days many Buy With Confidence members have received spam email messages. These messages mention that the person sending the message knows they are a member of the scheme, and requests services related to a sector/category that the business is listed under on the Buy With Confidence website. Many of these come from ‘internationalpurchase.info’ and contain a very general request for a quotation with bad grammar.

These are likely to be phishing e-mails. It appears that these are attempts to take control of people’s email accounts. The people may be hoping to take over email accounts in order to launch an interception scam, where they watch the messages being sent and received, and wait until a business is about to request a large payment from a client. They then step in and send an email with their own bank details, requesting a transfer. The client unwittingly pays the scammer and both they and the business are left out of pocket. (Please note, we have no evidence that this is currently happening to any Buy With Confidence members, but it appears this may be what the scammers are attempting).

If you have received any of these suspicious emails, please delete them and do not click on any unusual links. Do not enter your email password into any site you are not 100% sure needs it – neither Dropbox nor any other site needs this in order to allow you to access files*. If you are worried you may have already inadvertently given your email password or other details to a scammer, change your password as soon as possible and contact your provider to ensure there are no other actions they advise for you to take.

While we apologise that this is happening, it is unfortunately very difficult when providing an online list to the public which includes contact details – including email addresses – to prevent scammers from harvesting those details. Due to the potentially high value of the con mentioned above, scammers are willing to put extra effort into personalising their ‘phishing’ attempts with mentions of Buy With Confidence and apparent familiarity with what your business does. This can make it appear more legitimate than typical spam.

We have previously put precautions in place to make it more difficult for scammers to harvest e-mail addresses from the Buy With Confidence website, but it is difficult to completely prevent without making it more difficult for genuine people, including the vulnerable people Buy With Confidence is often used by, from finding legitimate businesses via the Buy With Confidence website.

If you have any further concerns, please email admin@buywithconfidence.gov.uk.

Regards,

The Buy With Confidence Team

*The only exception would be a webmail portal you know is provided by your email provider, but even there, double-check you are entering your details into a genuine URL/web address (e.g. Hotmail.com) and not a similar, spoof address.

Will Todd is cycling in the Prudential Ride100 on Sunday 4th August to raise much needed funds. The route will take him from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park out through the Surrey Hills before heading back into London and finishing on The Mall. With a couple of steep hills thrown in he will need all the encouragement he can get to keep pedalling!! To sponsor him go to Will’s online fundraising page.

A fabulous day was had on Saturday for the Calne Duck Race run by Calne Lions. We had a stand in a great position to watch all the activities. Will Todd, one of our Bobby Van operators was presented with a cheque for £1,000. Many thanks to Calne Lions for their continued support.

Many thanks to Tamas for talking to the villagers of Upton Scudamore last night regarding online safety. They found the talk “extremely interesting and very helpful”.