I recently received an e-mail which was purporting to have come from a friend and to the effect that he was stranded in Spain while on holiday there. In his e-mail he said that he had lost his money and travel documents to a pick pocket. He asked me to send money over to him in order that he can return to the UK. Suspecting that something was fishy, I contacted him by phone at his Ilford addresss and I found that he was at home all the time and had not been away from the country.
I also get calls from people posing as engineers from a renowned computer company and stating that they had found a fault on my pc and would need to fix that. They would ask for remote access to my pc in order to repair the fault. On asking for more detais from the person, he would hang up the phone. Finally, I also get calls from people who would say that I had been involved in a car accident and that they would help me in claiming compensation. As I have had not been involved in such accident, I would know that this would be a ploy to milk money out of me in some kind of a trap. So I would ask readers of AV that if you get these kind of e-mails, or phone calls, do not part with your details or money to them.
Dinesh Sheth
Newbury Park, Ilford
