Archived News - Internet
Thames Valley Police - Community Messaging
Watch members are continuing to report cold calls from a company, telling them that their computer is at risk, asking them to turn it on immediately, so that the caller can 'fix' the problem for them, for a fee.
Trading standard's advice is:-
- Do not deal with cold callers.
- Never give personal information over the telephone to cold callers.
- Never give passwords or credit cards and bank details over the telephone to unknown callers.
A resident had two calls yesterday from a security company, claiming to be doing a NHW survey and offering security systems for £1. When the resident identified themself as being a NHW co-ordinator the caller quickly made their excuses and terminated the call.
Any alarm or security systems at such a low cost may well have a heavy monthly monitoring fee and large cancellation costs.
Source: Ringmaster Bedfordshire
The International Routing System scam
It appears that a number of people have received calls from someone claiming to be from the International Routing System. This company does not exist, and the caller is trying to scam you into either installing infected software, or else to give them your credit card details.
Either put the phone down immediately, or else laugh at every statement they make as it is pure fiction.
Source: The International Routing System scam
Millions of BT internet users 'open to hackers'?
You may have seen this recent sensational headline in The Daily Telegraph. As usual, the truth is a little different from the headline.
The article states that 'Criminals could use software easily downloaded from the internet to crack passwords and change settings on the company's popular Home Hub system in as little as five seconds, experts warned. One specialist stated that customers could be living in a "false paradise"'.
The reality is that BT home hubs are usually delivered to home users with a security setting known as WEP switched on. Unfortunately the ability to crack WEP security has been known for some time, but it does require knowledge, special tools and the "hacker" to be situated within physical range of your BT home hub.
The fact that the hacker needs to be physically within range of your BT home hub (i.e. a few tens of metres away) means that the risk of someone taking the time to do this is very small, so there is no need to panic.
To remedy this small risk by changing a setting on your BT home hub is very simple, and details of how to do it are explained on BT's help page at http://www.bt.com/help/hub. You may also need to update any wireless devices connected to the BT home hub.