T.V. Licence scam

[poundcoin]

Received this today via email . At first glance quite plausible and I was nearly taken in as my standing order renews in March and I had recently received a letter outlining the monthly payment plan which was fortunately to hand .

The letter showed my correct licence number and I don't pay via credit card .

When you look closer you can see a few grammatical errors and its not addressed to me personally . When hovering over all the links they all go to a "ezpestinventory.com" domain plus a suffix .

[bungeejumper]

Indeed. I had the same thing last week. And from a similarly obscure email address (I always hover the mouse to check). By good fortune, I did a double-take ,because it's my wife who pays the licence and not me.

It was a superficially good fake, too, but yes, the grammatical errors gave it away. I wonder how long it'll take the scamsters to learn a bit of correct English grammar? When they eventually do, we're all screwed.

BJ

[PinkDalek]

They don't appear to have spoofed the email address or, if they have, they should have chosen something a little more convincing.

[Alaric]

It was a superficially good fake, too, but yes, the grammatical errors gave it away.

There's a worrying data leakage there. How does the scammer associate a TV Licence number with an email address? You can send emails out blind as many people with a UK email address will also have a TV Licence.

[Infrasonic]

The OP might want to repost the image with the licence number details redacted, otherwise every scanning bot on the net will be storing that away for future use, and if they get a nice cross match with another database hack, then bingo...

[poundcoin]

The OP might want to repost the image with the licence number details redacted, otherwise every scanning bot on the net will be storing that away for future use, and if they get a nice cross match with another database hack, then bingo...

The number quoted in the image isn't my licence number , its obviously made up ......it was probably my bad wording in the original post causing confusing .
I had the renewal letter through the post a few days ago so was easily able to check my "proper" licence number .

[Alaric]

The number quoted in the image isn't my licence number , its obviously made up

So it's just a "phishing" attempt.

[Slarti]

After having one of these I looked at the TV Licensing website and they say that they always address you by name and include other details.

Mind you, as it was to "Undisclosed Recipients" I was nowhere near tricked.

And the to email address buried in the headers was one only ever given to a now defunct supplier.

Could catch the unwary, but I suspect everything.

Slarti

[Clitheroekid]

It was a superficially good fake, too, but yes, the grammatical errors gave it away. I wonder how long it'll take the scamsters to learn a bit of correct English grammar? When they eventually do, we're all screwed.

I was told by someone who should know that these grammatical errors are inserted deliberately.

Apparently, the scammers work on the principle that people who respond to the emails despite the obvious grammatical errors are demonstrating their own ignorance and stupidity, and are thereby self-selecting themselves as being vulnerable to further such scams. Presumably, their email addresses are then sold on to the compilers of `sucker lists'.