‘Phishing’ is the fraudulent act of emailing a person in order to obtain their personal/business financial information such as passwords and credit card or bank account details. These emails often include a link to a bogus website encouraging you to enter your personal details. ‘Vishing’ is the term for the increasingly popular use of bogus phone calls to achieve the same results. Scams are getting increasingly sophisticated and often use a combination of these methods to obtain information which may further assist them in committing fraud.
For instance we have had a report this week of a vishing attempt from someone purporting to be from BWMacfarlane. If you receive a phone call or email from someone who is not your usual contact at BWMacfarlane we welcome you taking steps to validate their authenticity. This could be through calling our office number on 0151 236 1494 (preferably from a mobile so you can be sure the phone line is not compromised if you have received a potentially bogus call) or sending a new email to the known email address of the person you usually deal with.
There is guidance available that explains how to recognise genuine contact from HMRC, and how to tell when an email is phishing/bogus.
We also recommend checking out this useful guide from the Metropolitan Police: http://www.met.police.uk/docs/little_book_scam.pdf
You may already be aware that we offer a Secure Client Portal which allow us to exchange messages and files with our clients. Because it offers so many advantages over email, we welcome as many of our clients as possible to use the portal which is a free service. Please contact your usual contact at BWMacfarlane if you would like to be set up to use the portal.
One of our seminar topics this autumn will be on cyber security and fraud, please contact Vicki Harper to register your interest now.
