scammers – The NEN – North Edinburgh News

New blueprint to protect public from scammers

UK Government launches new strategy to cut fraud, pursue fraudsters and empower the public

A new elite team of specialist investigators will turn the tables on fraudsters as part of the UK Government’s new action to tackle fraud and stop scammers from exploiting people.

The new National Fraud Squad will overhaul how these crimes are investigated by taking a proactive, intelligence-led approach, backed by 400 new specialist investigators. It will work with local forces, international partners and the UK intelligence community to ensure that callous fraud cells who target millions of Brits each day are shut down.

Fraud is now the most common crime in the UK, with 1 in 15 of us falling victim, costing nearly £7 billion a year. With developments in modern technology opening up new avenues for criminals to target victims, 9 in 10 internet users have also encountered online scams.

The Fraud Strategy, unveiled yesterday, marks a step forward in the government’s fight back against scammers, in response to how these crimes have evolved.

New measures will close the routes that scammers use to target victims, including by banning cold calls on all financial products – such as types of insurance or sham crypto currency schemes – and working with Ofcom to use new technology to further clamp down on number ‘spoofing’, so fraudsters cannot impersonate legitimate UK phone numbers.

Government will also ban other devices or methods commonly harnessed by scammers to reach thousands of people at once such as so-called ‘SIM farms’ and review the use of mass texting services to keep these technologies out of the hands of criminals.

To make it easier for victims to report fraud and rebuild confidence that cases are being dealt with properly, a new system, replacing the current Action Fraud service will be up and running within the year.

Backed by a £30 million investment, it will provide a simpler route for reporting fraud online, with reduced waiting times and an online portal to allow victims to get timely updates on the progress of their case.

This improved service will also ensure victims’ reports are acted upon more effectively, using data to ensure we can continue to build intelligence as criminals continue to find new ways to target victims.

Seventy per cent of fraud in the UK either starts overseas or has an international link – to drive forward global efforts to tackle these crimes, the government will work bilaterally to raise fraud as a key priority. The Home Secretary will host the first global fraud summit in the UK to guarantee international collaboration to tackle this threat.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: Scammers ruin lives in seconds, deceiving people in the most despicable ways in order to line their pockets.

“We will take the fight to these fraudsters, wherever they try to hide. By blocking scams at the source, boosting protections for people and bolstering enforcement, we will stop more of these cold-hearted crimes from happening in the first place and make sure justice is done.”

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: “Fraud is a blight on our country with ruthless criminals scamming the British public out of their hard-earned cash. They exploit people’s trust and steal their life savings, shattering their confidence and leaving them feeling vulnerable.

“It also fuels serious organised crime and terrorism. Meanwhile scammers are adapting, taking advantage of new technology to prey on more victims.

“It is vital we adopt a new approach to this threat. The Fraud Strategy outlines how we will use all levers available to us – through government, law enforcement, industry and international partners – to track down these criminals, intercept their scams and bring them to justice.”

To push the response to fraud at the highest level, a new Anti-Fraud Champion, Anthony Browne MP, has been appointed. He will draw on his considerable experience as the former CEO of the British Banking Association to drive collaboration with industry and represent the UK internationally.

Anti-Fraud Champion, Anthony Browne MP said: “Fraud has grown to be the biggest form of crime in the UK, causing financial and emotional distress to millions of people.

“The tech sector, phone companies and financial services firms must take responsibility for protecting their users by stopping fraud happening in the first place, and work together to design out fraud. We can use the technologies fraudsters are exploiting against them to stop them in their tracks, and I will work with industry to make sure that happens.”

In plans announced yesterday, banks will be allowed to delay payments from being processed for longer to allow for suspicious payments to be investigated, keeping cash out of the hands of fraudsters and stopping more people from falling victim.

We are working with the largest tech companies to make it as simple as possible to report fraud online, whether it be scam adverts or false celebrity endorsements. This means, regardless of which social media platform you are on, you should be able to find the ‘report’ button within a single click, and ‘report fraud or scam’ within another. TikTok and Snapchat already offer this for adverts but have committed to extending to other types of content.

Further measures include:

rolling out tailored support to victims at a local level across the whole of England and Wales through the National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit
launching an independent review of the challenges in investigating and prosecuting fraud to speed up the justice process, punishing more scammers and ensuring sentences match the severity of the impact on victims
deploying the UK intelligence community to identify and disrupt more fraudsters overseas
publishing regular data on the volume of fraudulent content hosted on different websites and platforms to incentivise companies to root these out and better protect users – government will launch a consultation on how best to deliver this, including regularity of publications

Wednesday’s plans build on action already taken to step up protections for victims and clamp down on the criminals responsible for these crimes. That includes:

legislating to ensure more victims of fraud get their money back, by requiring financial institutions to reimburse victims of authorised fraud
making fraud a national priority for police forces, to help ramp up the response at local force level
investing £400 million for law enforcement to tackle economic crime, including fraud, over the next 3 years
new duties on tech companies through the Online Safety Bill to put systems in place to tackle scams on their platforms and publish annual transparency reports on their work to tackle online harms

Graeme Biggar, Director General of the National Crime Agency, said: “The NCA welcomes the new Fraud Strategy and our role in the National Fraud Squad.

“Through the National Economic Crime Centre, we will drive a proactive intelligence led response, holding fraudsters to account and protecting the public from criminals who operate increasingly online and overseas.

“We want fraudsters to feel the same vulnerability they inflict upon their victims, as we target their infrastructure, expose their identities and bring them to justice.”

Commissioner Angela McLaren from the City of London Police, which is the National Lead Force for fraud, said: “We welcome this strategy and the much-needed investment in policing to deliver against it.

“Tackling fraud requires a collective effort and we will continue to work with our partners across law enforcement and industry, doing everything in our power to pursue fraudsters and reduce the devastating harm they cause.”

Tax credits customers warned about scammers posing as HMRC

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is warning tax credits customers to be aware of scams and fraudsters who imitate the department in an attempt to steal their personal information or money.

About 2.1 million tax credits customers are expected to renew their annual claims by 31 July 2022 and could be more susceptible to the tactics used by criminals who mimic government messages to make them appear authentic.

In the 12 months, to April 2022, HMRC responded to nearly 277,000 referrals of suspicious contact received from the public. Fraudsters use phone calls, text messages and emails to try and dupe individuals – often trying to rush them to make decisions. HMRC will not ring anyone out of the blue threatening arrest – only criminals do that.

Typical scam examples include:

· phone calls threatening arrest if people don’t immediately pay fictitious tax owed. Sometimes they claim that the victim’s National Insurance number has been used fraudulently

· emails or texts offering spurious tax rebates, bogus COVID-19 grants or claiming that a direct debit payment has failed

Myrtle Lloyd, HMRC’s Director General for Customer Services, said: “We’re urging all of our customers to be really careful if they are contacted out of the blue by someone asking for money or bank details.

“There are a lot of scams out there where fraudsters are calling, texting or emailing customers claiming to be from HMRC. If you have any doubts, we suggest you don’t reply directly, and contact us straight away. Search GOV.UK for our ‘scams checklist’ and to find out ‘how to report tax scams’.”

HMRC does not charge tax credits customers to renew their annual claims and is also urging them to be alert to misleading websites or adverts designed to make them pay for government services that should be free, often charging for a connection to HMRC phone helplines.

Customers can renew their tax credits for free via GOV.UK or the HMRC app and are advised to search GOV.UK to get the genuine information and guidance.

Renewing online is quick and easy. Customers can log into GOV.UK to check the progress of their renewal, be reassured it is being processed and know when they will hear back from HMRC. Customers choosing to use the HMRC app on their smartphone can:

renew their tax credits
update changes to their claim
check their tax credits payments schedule, and
find out how much they have earned for the year

HMRC has released a video to explain how tax credits customers can use the HMRC app to view, manage and update their details.

If there is a change in a customer’s circumstances that could affect their tax credits claims, they must report the changes to HMRC. Circumstances that could affect tax credits payments include changes to:

· living arrangements

· childcare

· working hours, or

· income (increase or decrease)

Tax credits are ending and will be replaced by Universal Credit by the end of 2024. Many customers who move from tax credits to Universal Credit could be financially better off and can use an independent benefits calculator to check.

If customers choose to apply sooner, it is important to get independent advice beforehand as they will not be able to go back to tax credits or any other benefits that Universal Credit replaces.

Scammers targeting Self Assessment customers, HMRC warns

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is warning Self Assessment customers to be on their guard following the Self Assessment deadline after more than 570,000 scams were reported to HMRC in the last year.

At this time of year, Self Assessment customers are at increased risk of falling victim to scams, even if they don’t mention Self Assessment. They can be taken in by scam texts, emails or calls either offering a ‘refund’ or demanding unpaid tax, thinking that they are genuine HMRC communications referring to their Self Assessment return. In the 12 months to January 2022, nearly 220,000 scams reported to HMRC offered bogus tax rebates.

Criminals target unsuspecting Self Assessment customers to try and steal money or personal information. They use phone calls, texts and emails to try and dupe citizens, and often mimic government messages to make them appear authentic. In January 2022, phone scams rose to 3,995 compared to 425 reported in April 2020.

Myrtle Lloyd, HMRC’s Director General for Customer Services, said: “If someone contacts you saying they’re from HMRC, wanting you to transfer money or give personal information, be on your guard.

“Never let yourself be rushed, and if you’re in any doubt then check our ‘HMRC scams’ advice on GOV.UK.”

HMRC gave customers an extra month to submit a completed tax return and if customers filed by 28 February 2022, they would avoid a late filing penalty. More than 11.3 million customers filed their Self Assessment tax return by 28 February, with more than 1 million of those taking advantage of the extra time by filing in February.

Customers have until 1 April to pay their outstanding tax bill or set up a Time to Pay arrangement to avoid receiving a late payment penalty. Interest has been applied to all outstanding balances since 1 February.

Customers can now make Self Assessment payments quickly and securely through the HMRC app. Customers choosing to make secure Self Assessment payments through the HMRC app can either connect to their bank to make their payments or pay by Direct Debit, personal debit card or corporate/commercial credit/debit card.

A full list of the payment methods customers can use to pay their Self Assessment tax bill is available on GOV.UK.

Customers can report suspicious phone calls using a form on GOV.UK. Customers can also forward suspicious emails claiming to be from HMRC to phishing@hmrc.gov.uk and texts to 60599.

HMRC has a dedicated team working on cyber and phone crimes. They use innovative technologies to prevent misleading and malicious communications from ever reaching the customer.

Since 2017, these technical controls have prevented 500 million emails from reaching HMRC’s customers. More recently, new controls have prevented 90% of the most convincing SMS messages from reaching the public and controls have been applied to prevent spoofing of most HMRC helpline numbers.

HMRC is also reminding Self Assessment customers to double check websites and online forms before using them to complete their 2020/21 tax return.

People can be taken in by misleading websites designed to make them pay for help in submitting tax returns or charging to connect them to HMRC phone lines.

Customers who are in any doubt about whether a website is genuine should visit GOV.UK for more information about Self Assessment and use the free signposted tax return forms.

Which?: Some banks leaving customers exposed to scammers

Some banks can and should be doing more to protect their customers from criminals trying to steal sensitive information, Which? research has found.

With the last year seeing an increase in scams, many consumers will expect that the companies they deal with in their everyday lives are doing everything they can to protect them.

However, a new Which? investigation has found that some banks are failing to use all the tools available to them to combat scammers, leaving weaknesses in their security systems that scammers could exploit.

The consumer champion looked into what protections banks were putting in place to protect their customers from receiving fraudulent emails, SMS messages and phone calls.

These so-called phishing attacks are worryingly common. Scammers send legitimate-looking messages that are designed to tempt people into divulging sensitive information, such as bank account details, usernames or passwords.

Phishing scams may try to imitate (or ‘spoof’) banks’ genuine email addresses or domains, sometimes by making slight changes – for instance, by changing ‘.co.uk’ to ‘.com’.

Banks should be implementing a system that protects web addresses they own or use – known as ‘domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance’ (DMARC) – to prevent spoofing attacks.

Banks can use DMARC to tell email providers how to handle the unauthorised use of their domains.

The process of introducing DMARC is frequently done gradually: by initially setting records to ‘none’ (a monitoring phase where no action is taken if DMARC checks fail) before working towards ‘quarantine’ (which moves emails to junk/spam if they fail the checks) and ultimately, a policy of ‘reject’ (which blocks all emails that fail the checks).

When Which? asked security experts at technology company 6point6 in April to check whether banks offered this protection, some banks were falling short.

At the time of the investigation, the Bank of Ireland and Agricultural Mortgage Corporation – a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group – had not yet introduced DMARC.

This could have allowed scammers to forge their email address and send messages that would appear indistinguishable from genuine ones from their bank. Both have since taken action to resolve this.

The investigation also found that Nationwide, TSB and Virgin Money – nationwide.co.uk, tsb.co.uk and virginmoney.com, respectively – had not set their policies to ‘reject’ all emails that fail DMARC checks. TSB and Virgin Money told the consumer champion that they are working towards this.

Nationwide said it has security features to protect against spoofing and will ‘look at ways to improve email security, including future enhancements to DMARC security.’

The investigation also uncovered that The Co-operative Bank, First Direct, Starling and Tesco Bank had no DMARC system in place for their alternative domains, but did for their primary domains.

Although The Co-operative Bank has protected its ‘co-operativebank.co.uk’ email address, there are no DMARC records for ‘co-operative.co.uk’ and ‘coop.co.uk’ – two domains that are owned by The Co-operative Group, a separate company not associated with the bank – making them vulnerable to scammers who could pose as The Co-operative Bank using alternative email addresses.

Since the investigation, Starling and Tesco Bank have now applied DMARC to alternative domains, starlingbank.co.uk and tescobank.co.uk, respectively.

First Direct and The Co-operative Bank told Which? they are reviewing the inclusion of their alternative domains – firstdirect.co.uk and co-operativebank.com – within their existing DMARC policies.

While banks are further ahead than other industries when it comes to implementing DMARC, Which? believes that it is often too hard for customers to tell the difference between a phishing email and genuine communication from banks due to inconsistent practices across the industry.

This is particularly concerning amid a worrying culture of banks blaming victims for falling for scammers’ tricks, despite their heightened sophistication. This means people often face a lottery to get their money reimbursed under the industry’s voluntary bank transfer scams code.

Which? is calling for all banks to implement DMARC and configure it correctly, setting their policies to ‘reject’, meaning email providers should block any emails that fail these checks.

Banks should also be clamping down on number spoofing, which involves scammers manipulating caller IDs to mimic the phone numbers of legitimate organisations. To tackle this, Ofcom worked with the banking industry body UK Finance to identify a list of ‘do not originate’ (DNO) numbers – numbers that are never used for outbound calls.

Most banks had signed up to the scheme at the time of the investigation, apart from The Co-operative Bank and Nationwide – although both have since told Which? they plan to join.

Banks can also protect their SMS headers – the name or number a text message appears to come from – against spoofing by registering with the SMS SenderID Protection Registry run by the Mobile Ecosystem Forum.

The consumer champion believes that if banks did not include weblinks or phone numbers in their official SMS communications – sensitive information that is prone to spoofing – consumers could feel more secure and be able to spot scams more easily.

Which? is working on a best practice guide for businesses to help raise standards of SMS communications and bring greater consistency to how they protect consumers.

Jenny Ross, Which? Money Editor, said: “It has never been harder for people to know whether they’re receiving genuine communications from their bank, or being tricked – so it is crucial that banks take every measure to protect their customers from these devastating scams.

“These include implementing email scam protections properly and no longer putting phone numbers and links in messages, to ensure customers feel safe and can bank with confidence.”

Sturgeon slams ‘despicable’ COVID scammers

Statement given by the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at a media briefing in St Andrew’s House yesterday (Tuesday 15 September):

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us again today.

I will start with the usual run through of the daily statistics with apologies in advance. Parts of my briefing today are a little bit technical because it’s about how we report figures and while it might seem a bit difficult to follow today, what I’m going to report to you, particularly around people in hospital, is in the interest of making these figures more accurate and more transparent as we go into the next phase of tackling the pandemic.

But I can report firstly today, that the total number of positive cases reported yesterday was 267. This represents 3.6% of people newly tested.

101 of those cases were in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, 59 were in in Lanarkshire, 53 were in Lothian and 13 were in Ayrshire and Arran.

The remaining 41 were spread amongst the other seven mainland health board areas.

However to be clear, and this is the point I want to stress today, these, as indeed our daily figures always are, are test results that were reported yesterday.

Because of the backlog in the UK wide system that I referred to yesterday, this figure will include – a bit more than it normally would – results from swabs taken over the past few days.

We hope that the backlog of the past few days will have worked its way through the system shortly.

And just to be clear, to reassure you, for the purposes of our trend analysis, tests are looked at by day of the sample, not just by date of reporting, to ensure that we are tracking the increase in cases accurately. From that analysis of course, right now unfortunately, we do know that cases are rising .

Now as I said yesterday, I do have a concern about the capacity constraints right now within the UK wide system – for Scotland in recent days, just to be clear, this has not been an issue of access to testing slots, regional testing centres or mobile testing units but instead it’s been one of access to sufficient lighthouse laboratory processing.

And it has been this that has led to a backlog in the system and longer turnaround times for tests than we want to be the case.

Now as this is a UK wide system, we are not able to resolve this on our own. And the issues are impacted by demand elsewhere in the UK.

To that end, I had a conference call, a constructive conference call, last night with Matt Hancock, UK Health Secretary and Dido Harding, who is head of the UK testing system, to seek firstly assurances that Scotland is and will continue to get fair access to the UK wide laboratory capacity and also to discuss how we can resolve these issues. I hope to see improvement in next few days, but of course I will continue to provide updates.

I also, and this takes me into the slightly technical bit of the briefing, I want to provide some context before providing today’s update for the number of people in hospital with Covid.

Now, if you cast your mind back a couple of weeks now I think if you are one of the regular viewers of this briefing, I indicated then we were looking at how we report on numbers of people in hospital.

Under that measure, the one we have been using up until now, lots of people are classified as being Covid patients, even if they have recovered from Covid and are now being treated for a condition that is unrelated to it.

That old measure was providing accurate information at the peak the epidemic of this first phase back in the year when there were 1,500 Covid patients in hospital.

But as the pandemic has progressed, we have been reporting a higher number of hospital cases than is probably justified and that’s the issue I alluded to a couple of weeks ago.

For example in late August, Scotland officially accounted for almost one third of the hospital patients with Covid in the UK – despite having one twelfth of the UK’s population, and a relatively low incidence of the virus at that stage.

To try to ensure we are no longer counting patients who no longer really have Covid, we are from now, and I’ll report under the new measurement today, but then regularly from tomorrow, we’re moving to a new definition.

From now on, we will only count patients who first test positive for Covid during their current stay in hospital, or in the two weeks before their admission.

In addition, we will stop classifying them as Covid patients, for statistical purposes after 28 days in hospital – or 28 days after the date of their positive test, whichever is later.

This new measure will be an improvement on the old one – but it is important for me to point out that it will not be absolutely perfect.

The effects of Covid sometimes require hospital stays of longer than 28 days, and so a small number of patients with Covid may not be captured by the measure I’ve just outlined there

I have therefore asked Public Health Scotland to develop analysis about patients who unfortunately end up spending longer in hospital.

But overall, this new measure will give us a better picture both of the current situation in hospitals, and crucially, given the phase of the pandemic we are going into, it will be more sensitive to the changes in hospital admissions caused by new cases. So it will enable us to more accurately reflect and report any increase in hospital admissions over the next period.

So, under the old measure, I would be telling you, and I am going to tell you, that 262 patients are in hospital. That is two fewer than yesterday.

But that is the last time I’m going to give you that old measure, instead I’m going to move to the new and more accurate measure and I will use that solely from tomorrow onwards and under that measure, as of today there are 48 patients in hospital under that more narrow but more accurate measurement and we will be able to track it better now the increase in hospital admissions from here on in.

And using the new definition, I can report, there are six people are in intensive care. Under the old definition I would have been reporting seven in intensive care so clearly the change in measurement doesn’t have the same impact towards numbers in intensive care as it does on broader hospital numbers. .

And finally, in terms of my daily statistics update, I regret to have to report that in the past 24 hours, one additional death has been registered of a patient who first tested positive over the previous 28 days.

That means that the total number of deaths, under this daily measurement, is now 2,500.

That total serves again to remind us of the impact of this virus and why we can never, ever be complacent about the risks it poses and I want again to pass on my condolences to everybody who has lost a loved one – including of course everyone who is grieving as a result of the death that was registered yesterday.

There are a couple of other issues I want to address before Jason Leitch and I take questions from the media as normal.

The first is just to report here, we made this public last night but I thought it was worth reporting, that we had a meeting yesterday as I indicated earlier yesterday we would, to discuss the current position in Greater Glasgow and Clyde

And the good news is, that early indications suggest that the restrictions in place in Glasgow City, East and West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire might be helping to slow down the increase in new cases. So that at this stage is positive.

But the number of new cases in these parts of Greater Glasgow and Clyde remains very high and is still increasing, all be it, we think, at a slower rate than would’ve been the case without these restrictions being in place. So taking all of that into account and the local authorities for these areas were present at the meeting yesterday. We agreed that the existing restrictions should remain in place for a further week and then they will be reviewed again at that stage.

That means people in these areas, Glasgow City, East or West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire should not visit other households at all.

Those same restrictions now also apply as of last Friday, in North and South Lanarkshire,

In all of these seven local authority areas, you should not host someone in your home – unless it is for essential care purposes. And you should not visit someone else in their home – again unless it’s for care purposes or delivery of shopping to a venerable or elderly person and that is regardless of where they live. So I live in Glasgow City, I can’t have people in my home but equally I can’t go and visit my parents for example, who live in Ayrshire and Arran which is not one of these affected areas.

The second issue I want to cover today relates to the Test and Protect service.

We are aware that some fake callers are pretending to work for Test and Protect , and are trying to con people by claiming that payment is needed for a test.

Sadly, this reminds us that there are always a small number of people, a tiny minority , but never the less they’re there, who will try to exploit any situation they can to defraud people. And it is truly and utterly despicable particularly at this time of crisis that we are living though.

But in light of it, I wanted to take the opportunity today to remind you and ask you to remind others that you know, that Covid tests are free, and will always be free for those who need them.

Nobody from Test and Protect will ever ask you for financial information –they will never ask you for your bank or credit card details – and they will never try to sell you anything.

The only thing Test and Protect staff will ask you about, is where you’ve been and details of the people you have been in contact with.

Genuine contact tracers will often also first send you a text to let you know that you will shortly receive a call from NHS Scotland.

Callers will always introduce themselves and state the reason for their call. They will know your name. They will ask you for details of people you have come into contact with, in a relevant time period. They will tell you that you will receive further information by e-mail or post.

And they will always call from the same number – 0800 030 8012 – and they will give you the option of calling back on that number if you need to verify the service.

There is a lot of useful information about this on the Coronavirus sections of the Trading Standards Scotland website, and the Advice Direct Scotland website.

You can report any concerns about calls you have received to Advice Direct Scotland. And if you are unfortunate enough to have been the victim of a scam, or an attempted scam, you should contact the police on 101.

Fundamentally, if a person claiming to be a contact tracer is asking about things that aren’t necessary – in particular your bank details or computer passwords – then put the phone down straight away because they are not a legitimate contact tracer .

As I mentioned earlier, if you do get phoned by a legitimate contact tracer you have the option of phoning them back – on 0800 030 8012 – if you want to verify the call.

Genuine contact tracers will only ever ask about your movements, and details of the people you have been in contact with. This is a small minority of people, hopefully it won’t happen to any of you watching, but I thought it was important to take the opportunity to stress what will and will not be asked of you if you do get one of these calls, so that together we can make sure these people who attempt theses scams, these despicable people don’t get anywhere in Scotland.

The final point I want to make just to round off, is to remind you of the new rules which came into force yesterday, and of our other important public health guidance.

As you should all know, unless you live in one of the areas I’ve already spoken about where stricter restrictions are in place, no more than six people can now meet up together – and those six people can come from no more than two households.

Children under the age of 12, do not count as part of the total of six, but they do count towards the total for households. I said on Friday I would look at further advice on whether we could give greater flexibility for children and I hope to give the outcome of that later this week.

That rule – six people and two households – applies indoors and outdoors: in homes, pubs and restaurants, and in outdoor spaces such as parks and private gardens.

So please make sure that you are not breaching those limits.

This step – limiting the number of people and households you interact with – is a tough one and it’s really not an easy one or a welcome one at all. But it is a really vital step in helping us to keep the virus under control by limiting the interactions that we know are most likely to cause it to spread.

Please also, if you haven’t already done so, download the Protect Scotland app if you can. I know that last time I looked this morning 950,000 of you have already done that, but we want as many people as possible to do so.

It is very quick and easy to do. It’s a simple but very powerful way of all of us as individuals helping the country collectively.

And as always, and this will be my final comment, remember all the other things and we all need to do to try to minimise the risk of Covid spreading and all of that of course is encapsulated in FACTS. The five golden rules to try to minimise the spread.

• Face coverings should be worn in enclosed spaces
• Avoid crowded places.
• Clean your hands and hard surfaces regularly.
• keep Two metres away from other households
• and Self isolate, and book a test, if you have symptoms.

So thank you for bearing with me though what I know was a bit of a technical briefing today. Occasionally they will be like this because we are trying as we are go through the pandemic to make sure that we are reporting information in a clear, accurate and as transparent way as possible.

As we go through different phases sometimes that means changing definitions that we have used previously and so explaining that takes a bit of time and hopefully over the next period, these things will become much clearer for all of us.

Thank you for listening.

Shut out the Scammers

Police Scotland is advising the public to be cautious of strangers offering bogus services during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Social distancing and self-isolation mean more people than usual are in their homes at the moment. This presents an ideal opportunity for criminals to take advantage of elderly and vulnerable people, in particular.

Across the UK there is evidence fraudsters are increasingly targeting members of the public, as well as organisations of all sizes, with emails, texts, telephone calls and social media messages offering advice and treatments for coronavirus (COVID-19).

Scammers have set up fake websites to sell products and offer so-called cures or testing kits, as well as requesting donations to help victims. In some instances, cold callers have contacted organisations suggesting a legal requirement to have certain measures in place by a specific deadline.

Launching the campaign, Chief Superintendent David Duncan, Safer Communities Division said: “We are aware that community groups are being set up to help vulnerable members of our communities and we do not, in any way, want to impact on the good work being carried out.

“However it is imperative that we are all aware that vulnerable people can be seen as easy targets by criminals seeking to take advantage of this unprecedented and dynamic situation.

“Anyone can be a victim of doorstep crime – it is nothing to be embarrassed about. Criminals can be very clever, and play on your emotions and insecurities. If someone comes to your door claiming to be from a legitimate organisation, always ask for identification.

“Don’t give people money or your bank details if they come to your door and offer to do shopping for you if you don’t know them. And never give your debit or credit card and PIN to anyone.

“If you are self-isolating, let friends and family know and if in doubt about anyone offering services at your door, step back and take a few minutes to contact them for advice. You can also visit the Police Scotland website for more information.”

Between April and September 2019, more than £600,000 has been taken from householders in 306 instances of doorstep and bogus crime.

Fiona Richardson, Chief Officer of Trading Standards Scotland said: “Trading Standards is at the forefront of tackling consumer related scams.

“Working in partnership with the police and other Shut out Scammers partners means that we are better able to protect our most vulnerable citizens from COVID related scams.”

Police Scotland is working with a number of partners on the Shut Out Scammers campaign to signpost the public to relevant prevention advice and support services. These include: Trading Standards Scotland; Advice Direct Scotland; Neighbourhood Watch Alert; Age Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

If you want to read more of our advice and guidance on preventing crime, visit our dedicated webpage at https://www.scotland.police.uk/keep-safe/personal-safety/Shut-Out-Scammers.

A video of Chief Superintendent David Duncan speaking about the campaign is available via this link: https://we.tl/t-i53gCyIlS0

Be alert: ATM skimming devices warning

ATM SKIMMING DEVICES

Given further discoveries of ATM skimmers in Edinburgh city centre, Dalkeith and Drylaw, Police Scotland is urging members of the public to be extra vigilant when withdrawing cash from ATMs.

– Check for tampering
If anything looks out of the ordinary, don’t use it. There might be something that just doesn’t look quite right near the screen, near the card reader itself or the keyboard perhaps. Trust your instincts.

– Have a wiggle
Skimmers read the magnetic stripe on your card as its inserted. By giving your card a wiggle as you put it in the machine, this will foil any skimmer that’s in the machine, without interfering with your transaction.

– Assume you’re being watched
Whether its through a hidden camera or by someone hovering over your shoulder, shield your pin as you enter it.

– ‘Up the Ante’ at the Weekends
Fraudsters know it’s harder to report anything suspicious to the bank over the weekend, so chances of machines being hit are higher. Take extra care out of business hours and on Saturdays and Sundays.

If your card is retained by the cash machine, contact your card issuer immediately.