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Fraud Alert: Argos Credit Card Refund SMS text message

Quick post to publish details of a fairly convincing fraudulent SMS text message received stating “Your Argos credit card has a refund of £270 from an overpayment”. This is followed by a link that when previewed almost looks legitimate and takes you to a spoofed Argos Login page to try and scam your username and password. What’s most convincing about this scam is that the SMS appears to come from “Argos” no number used and appears below a list of older genuine SMS from Argos for previous purchases. This in itself might be sufficient to convince most people to click the link and enter their details in the hope of a refund.

Things to look out for to know it’s a scam

  • Do you have an Argos Credit Card? In fact does one even exists? If not then straight away you know it’s a scam.
  • Are you expecting a refund from Argos? If not then you know it’s a scam. Don’t hold out hope that Argos is refunding you and you’ve got free money.
  • Look at the URL carefully. It doesn’t end Argos.co.uk it has a hyphen and then has -existing-customers etc on the end.

Don’t even click the link, you’d be surprised how much information they can gather from your browser just from cookies on their scam site.

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WARNING: Business scam/spoof email requested payment of just under £10,000

DO NOT PAY ANY MONEY! IT IS A SCAM!

Screenshot: Spear Phishing / Whaling Scam email

Quick heads up to anybody searching for information about this. As of 24th January 2018 there appear to be an influx of emails to businesses around the UK trying to trick the accounts department into paying large sums of money to a new beneficiary.

The body of the email is short and to the point:

I need you to process a “Faster Payment” to a new beneficiary, can you handle this right now?

Payee details attached.

Regards

<Director’s Name>

Sent from my iPhone.

The emails generally appear to come from the name of a company director and the email address may look legitimate but the hidden “reply to” address is different and the contents of the email and attachment are a scam. The reply to email address is subtly changed and instead of .co.uk on the end of the email address it’s .co.uk-k.uk which a lot of people might not notice, especially on a small smart phone screen that truncates text.

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