HM Revenue & Customs Email Scam

New Scam Email.  

There is a new email circulating, informing the recipient they are subject to a Tax Refund, the email at first glance looks to have come from HMRC.  The recipient is advised to fill out the attached form, in order to receive the refund.

This is a scam and is basically after your credit card details, asking for your Visa Security Password and security card.  Please see below a copy of the form.

If you receive this email please disregard. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will never send notifications of a tax rebate by email, or ask you to disclose personal or payment information by email.  If in doubt contact HMRC.

The importance of backup

We recently had a visit from a client whose laptop had suffered hard disk problems. Unfortunately, as there was no backup available, we had to try to recover the data on the hard disk, which included precious family photographs and important accounts.

Furthermore, without their laptop, the client could no longer raise invoices. If we couldn’t recover the data, the client would have to re-input all invoice data from November to January. To make matters even worse, the client’s VAT return and tax return we both due.

After initial diagnostics, it was apparent that the hard disk failure had been caused by a mechanical fault. We sent the hard disk to a specialist lab that would take it apart and try to rebuild it.

All initial diagnostics work was carried out free of charge, and within 24 hours we had a report back from the lab.

The good news – they were able to recover all data on the disk. The bad news – the hard drive required a new head stack, and would need a ‘transplant’. This meant sourcing an identical drive and replacing the head stack from the new disk into the damaged disk. The cost of the repair was £800 plus VAT and the client couldn’t afford to get it fixed.

In most cases we can recover your data for as little as £80 plus VAT. In this case, the absence of backup and the nature of the fault meant the cost was ten times this amount. By far the best protection is to regularly backup your computer. Windows 7 has an excellent in built backup system and just requires a USB hard drive to backup to – these cost from as little as £40.

For more information on backup solutions, and for practical, friendly advice, call us on 01225 636000.

Major Internet Outage for BT Business Customers

It seems like BT Business Broadband are suffering with problems today, we currently have several clients using BT Business Broadband with Internet Connection Issues.  So far we have client in Bath, Cirencester, Swindon, Plymouth and Southampton.

This issue seems to be affecting all BT Business Customers with Static IP Address.

And now, and iTunes scam...

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a phone-based scam that had come to the fore. If we wanted, we could make every one of blog posts about one or more of the new scams or phishing attempts that have come to light, but by and large we want to keep things a little more varied.
 
However, at the end of last week – set to coincide with the start of the Christmas shopping season and what the American’s call Black Friday* – a new fake email has been doing the rounds.
 
It claims to be from Apple’s iTunes Store and offers you credit on music, games and the like. But if you follow the instructions, download and decompress the ZIP file, you give hackers access to your computer, your passwords and other information.
 
In the scheme of things, this is far from the most ominous, dangerous or disruptive scam we’ve seen – so why are we giving it airtime?
 
The answer is due to its timing.
 
From here on it until Christmas – and then into the new year – you are likely to receive an unprecedented number of emails from companies offering you discounts and savings.
 
Most, of course, will be legitimate, but for hackers, preying on people’s desire for a festive freebie or seasonal saving is a great way to get people to unwittingly click on something that perhaps they would have been more suspicious of at another time of the year.
 
So, remember, if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is – especially at Christmas!
 
If you would like more advice on protecting your computer systems from malware, viruses and cyber attacks, just call us on 01225 636000 or simply email us.
 
 
*BTW, ‘Black Friday’ may sound an ominous name for the start of the Christmas shopping period, but it’s actually a tongue-in-cheek term that refers to the time when shops get their accounts out of the red and back into the black!

The future is fibre

Zen Internet, the broadband provider we recommend due to the quality and reliability of their service, have announced a new Fibre Optic Broadband offering, with download speeds of ‘up to 40Mbps’ and upload speeds of ‘up to 10Mbps’.
 
As stated by Zen Internet, these superfast broadband services will ultimately allow your business to do more – and do it faster. You’ll be able to access critical business applications faster, collaborate quicker with your customers and suppliers and upload web pages in seconds.
 
Zen Internet's Fibre Optic Broadband service will also enable your business to:
 
• Collaborate at high-speed; sharing files with regional offices, partners or remote workers
• Move your meetings online with better quality video-conferencing
• Experience higher quality VoIP services
• Benefit from more responsive hosted business applications
 
Exciting news, huh?
 
We certainly think so… however we may all have to wait a little while before we can all access this new service.
 
The rollout of the nationwide fibre optic infrastructure necessary for the provision of the service is being undertaken by BT, who aim to give two-thirds of UK premises the ability to access a fibre-optic broadband service by 2015.
 
Fingers crossed, our area will be fibred-up sooner rather than later. Suffice to say, we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, with Zen Internet being awarded ‘Which? Recommended Broadband Provider’ for the fifth time in a row, and ‘PC ‘Pro Best ISP’ for the eighth time in a row’ there are many good reasons to switch to their current Business Broadband service.
 
Simply call 01225 636000 or email us for more details.

Beware of phony tech-support phone calls

“Hello! It’s Microsoft Tech Support here. We’re calling as our systems have detected a virus present on your PC. No… don’t worry… we can fix it remotely. All you have to do is follow my instructions…”
 
Sound familiar? Hopefully not, but unfortunately this is the nature of several fraudulent phone calls received recently by a number of people that we know.
 
‘Phishing’ – the process whereby criminals send you emails purporting to be from your bank in an attempt to get you to enter your account details on a fraudulent website – is now a well known practice.
 
Most people have received phishing emails, and many receive them on a daily basis. The phone-based equivalent is not new, but has been less prevalent… until now.
 
A report published by Microsoft in June this year stated that 15% of the 7,000 computer users it surveyed had been targeted by a ‘tech support’ phone scam. On average, the scam cost victims over £500. Half of the victims reported subsequent computer problems, and almost one in five had suffered identity fraud.
 
As an IT support company that uses phone and internet-based support, we’re keen to ensure that none of our clients fall victim in the same way.
 
We therefore echo Microsoft’s own advice, and encourage you to:
 
• Be suspicious of unsolicited calls related to a security problem, even if they claim to represent Priority IT, Microsoft or any other respected company.

• Never provide personal information, such as credit card or bank details, to an unsolicited caller.

• Never go to a website, type anything into a computer, install software or follow any other instruction from someone who calls out of the blue.
 
If you ever need to verify that a call from Priority IT is genuine, simply call us back on our usual number, 01225 636000. We’ll never be offended… in fact, we’ll be pleased to see you taking your security seriously.
 
If you’ve already been targeted by a phone scam, we’d be interested to hear the details in order that we can alert our clients to the nature of the call. Simply email us with the details, or post a comment here on our blog.