Scams, Phishing, phone calls and Facebook.. and SAFEGUARDING

The Covid Pandemic seems to have fuelled the intensity of effort of those people who want to part us from our money without any thought as to the long term consequences of their thefts. Those people with dementia but still independent or the very lonely are particularly vulnerable. 

In the last week I have again encountered

• the belligerent and demanding woman with an Indian accent claiming to be from BT. whose main aim is to convince people to allow them to put an app on their computer to ‘help’ where actually it s there to steal banking details. 
• The cheery greeting who needs a favour from a Facebook ‘friend’ who is actually someone who has copied the name of an account and used some of the photographs from it. (advice on protection from that below)
• A phone call from a friend worried about a threat that came up on her computer urging the recipient to press a certain link to sort it out – of course that would have led to stealing the details but she very wisely deleted it immediately. Those can be really scary! 
• A fake email from an account pretending to be our rector! That I reported to <report@phishing.gov.uk>; but presumably would have been a request for money eventually had I replied. 
• an email from ‘Royal Mail’ for a parcel they could not deliver wanting me to log on to a fake site in which to pay my re-delivery fee. 
• One from Lloyds bank, (I do not have an account there) telling e to press a link to check a security issue. 
• three social media friendship requests purporting to be  from scantily clad young women offering ….. er all sorts.  (deleted and blocked!) Learning how to block is an important part of online safety.
• and a dozen more…….. 

And if they don’t want to scam online their are the false vaccine hoaxes, the demands for money for a Covid test and the good old fashioned call at the door to sell you a substandard service that you don’t really need 

These are real safeguarding concerns for all those people who are new to technology or who are vulnerable and all of us Safeguarding savvy folk should be promoting ways of keeping safe and keeping an eye on our vulnerable folk.  I know safeguarding sounds like a box-ticking exercise but please think about doing the online courses which are all free to do: https://trurodiocese.org.uk/resources/safeguarding/training-safeguarding/

Safety online – Using Facebook- for all of you who do.  This is potentially quite a serious safeguarding issue if people are fooled.

A useful tip: It is a good idea to go to the settings tab little down arrow just along from your picture top right… select privacy and then set your friends so that only you can see them. There are folk making clones of accounts to pretend to be folks they are not …. if you hide your friends list it makes it harder for them to message people you know, Just occasionally put your name in search and you can see whether someone has copied your account and used some of your pictures