cfmonk Posted December 9, 2009 Share Posted December 9, 2009 Hi all, Received an email today from UK Yellow Guide. The email said this: Company: XXXXXXXXAddress: The House, The RoadTown: A townPostcode: BR12 666Phone: 01123455Fax: 012344E-Mail: paul.worthington@hello.meWeb Site: We kindly ask you to examine the data and attachment thoroughly. You may return the attached form by fax. It is also possible to informally submit a request for your basic entry data to be corrected or changed free of charge until December 30th, 2009. Fortunately my dad (best source of business advice ever) had warned me about as similar scam a year or so ago. On opening the attachment I then made a special effort to read the small print which included the line: Moderation: details of poster's company removed to avoid confusionBy signing and returning this form to the fax number above a legally binding contract is closed between the ordering party and Ucalegon Ltd. (registered in the Seychelles corporation register, No. 038677), 306 Victoria House, Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles, to publish the data shown/given above in The UK Yellow Guide as a premium business listing with the benefits indicated. The cost per year is 699 GBP. The amount is due and to be paid in advance each year. The client agrees to pay the amount due within 15 days after issuing of invoice. The contract period is two years and will be extended by another year unless written notice to terminate has been given three months prior to the end of the term of contract. Company based in Seyschelles so not much can be done about them. I'm not sure whether they would be able to enforce it but best avoided! I sent them a nicely offensive email in return and told them to go and crawl back under whichever stone they came out from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevieR Posted December 9, 2009 Share Posted December 9, 2009 I've seen similar before and even had a few of those calls that are "just updating our details" and then at the end of the call they then quietly mention their 'insertion fee' which they will be sending out the invoice for.... Cheeky monkeys! It would be good to forward such 'misleading' approaches on to someone like Trading standards. However, they are unlikely to be of use in this case as these are targeted at businesses rather than individuals. It may be worth forwarding this onto organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses, though, to disseminate to their members. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pritch Posted December 9, 2009 Share Posted December 9, 2009 Mods, might it be worth editing the company details out of the original post? From a casual glance, it looks like the OP is framing their own company as dodgy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfmonk Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 I guess it does a bit... but I'm sure most people will work it out and I think having the verbatim email is more important. The company that sent it is registered in the Seyshelles so Trading Standards is not really a viable option. I will get in touch with the FSB. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slipstream Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 fraud.alert@met.police.uk always like this and the Nigerian advance fee emails - make sure you include the headers that came with the email Sam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevieR Posted December 13, 2009 Share Posted December 13, 2009 Technically, this is probably not 'fraud', just extremely misleading advertising. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfmonk Posted December 21, 2009 Author Share Posted December 21, 2009 Yeah I also doubt it is fraud. Mainly because the only way I can imagine them being able to get the money out of people is through court actions or at least threats of them which wouldn't work at all if the initial action was fraudulant. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lightnix Posted December 21, 2009 Share Posted December 21, 2009 ...On opening the attachment I then made a special effort to read the small print...Always a good idea :o I'll add my voice to the "not fraud" school, I get stuff like this landing in inbox at work all the time. Sure - they're looking for mug punters, but they're not actually doing anything illegal. Most of the ones I've been getting recently, have been "invitations" to appear in various, so-called Who's Whos of the World's most headhuntable executives (rofl) - which is nice... until you notice that they want a World's most headhuntable executive price; for doing little more, than printing your name in a book that nobody's ever heard of :** laughs out loud **: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomo Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Actually, if they were based in the UK what they're doing would be illegal as the ASA have previously made clear.- Quite a few such scams have been shut down by the ASA working with Trading Standards, mostly with regards to website hosting and domain registration. Unfortunately as they aren't based here, there are fewer avenues available. But do get in touch with the ASA and Trading Standards anyway, as they may be able to disseminate suitable warnings to the right organisations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiffy Posted February 11, 2010 Share Posted February 11, 2010 I am slightly amazed that nobody has said this already, but.... NEVER EVER OPEN ATTACHMENTS FROM PEOPLE YOU DO NOT KNOW!!!!!!!! It is so incredibly easy to insert a virus into your machine by clicking on a PDF, JPG, whatever, often, you are the person installing it and so your Anti-Virus may well miss it, as it's a user initiated event! I would wager that most of you have your remote desktop services enabled within your services.msc and it's no big mission to insert a RAT (remote access tool) into a machine. From there, your machine is a few clicks by a remote hacker away from handing over all your personal details.... Far more concerning than someone trying to scam you out of 600.00 quid I'd say.... Cheers Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfmonk Posted February 13, 2010 Author Share Posted February 13, 2010 Irrelevant to me as I opened it in Google Documents. Although am struggling to find current examples of PDF vulnerabilities, cross scripting appears to have been made safe in the latest versions of Adobe reader and the GMail virus scanner seems pretty adept at finding anything nasty? Am happy to be proved wrong though... And if I didn't open attachments from people I didn't know then I wouldn't know about a lot of things! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Duffy Posted February 13, 2010 Share Posted February 13, 2010 There's been a crackdown of these type of scams in Australia. They still send out their crap (usually via snail mail), but they must display "This is a solicitation - NOT a tax invoice" in large bold right up the top. A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on. I am slightly amazed that nobody has said this already, but.... NEVER EVER OPEN ATTACHMENTS FROM PEOPLE YOU DO NOT KNOW!!!!!!!! I don't think anyone in business would get very far following that advice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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