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Post by leonardo on Feb 10, 2005 19:33:19 GMT
Please be on the look-out for messages like the following:
"Dear Customer,
Due to malfunction of our database server some of the vital data related to your account has been lost. Please, update your account information on our web site in 3 days or your account will be deleted.
James Dawson, MSN Support Service."
Careful! It's all a sham. MSN would never start with "Dear Customer." They would use your actual name.
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bod
Member
UGLE - MM (London), MMM RAM(Middx), OSM (London)
Posts: 1,296
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Post by bod on Feb 11, 2005 18:27:30 GMT
Another warning - this time for company owners or directors:
UK firms are urged to be on the lookout for an emerging scam which specifically targets the Companies House database. Online fraud prevention scheme Early Warning warns that it is easy for fraudsters to change the registered office for the limited company whose details they have obtained.
Armed with the details of a particular limited company, including the postal address of the head office and its registered company number, a fraudster can submit a form to change the address of a firm to a mailbox address or even a short let residential property. The necessary information to carry out this Corporate ID theft can be easily found on the internet.
Once a "Form 287" is completed and submitted, Companies House will amend its database without getting confirmation and normally following only basic checks. The fraudster is then at liberty to start opening trade accounts and ordering goods to be delivered to the bogus address.
The innocent company whose details have been altered by the fraudster will only find out about the scam when the debt collectors arrive, or when legal action is initiated to recover the goods that have been fraudulently obtained.
"Companies House cannot prevent hijacking. It does not have the power to investigate the contents and accuracy of forms sent to them for filing," said Early Warning's managing director Andrew Goodwill.
Goodwill said he knew of three companies (a Kent property company, an antique dealer and flooring company, both in London) who had fallen victim to the scam. Early Warning became aware of the scam when fraudsters posing as one of companies ordered computer hardware from one its members two weeks ago.
Fraud prevention A spokesman for Companies House said it was aware of company hijacking as an emerging problem. He said it recently introduced an electronic filling service with built in safeguards called PROOF (PROtected Online Filing) to combat such frauds. If a company decides to sign up to PROOF Companies House will accept specific statutory forms in electronic format only, and will refuse any paper submissions of the form. "The system relies on electronic codes - not signatures - and has greater built-in security," the Companies House spokesman explained.
Firms still on paper filing have the option of using a Companies House monitoring service to keep tabs on documents filed with the government organisation. An electronic version of this service was recently introduced. All well and good, but shouldn't Companies House be doing more rigorous checks on documents submitted to it in the first place? That's simply not practical, the Companies House spokesman said: "We don't have the power and resources to go back and check 9m documents."
Early Warning's Goodwill said that firms need to be vigilant to guard against the scam. "Every Limited company should check their registered office details on the Companies House website and this should probably be done every month or so. Companies House has no responsibility to validate the details contained in Form 287 and that it may even require legislative changes to get them to do so," he said. ®<br>www.theregister.co.uk
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