29/08/2025
Our August lunch was held, as usual, at the Wi******er Racquets and Fitness Club on August 7and was well attended. The speaker was Hiro Taylor of Hampshire Constabulary who spoke on "Cyber and cyber fraud related advice i.e. Scams". His talk proved very popular, containing as it does, many details of the scams which surround us these days. Here follows an excellent synopsis, prepared by Barrie Brinkman.
Hiro is a member of the Southeast Region Organised Crime Cyber crime unit. The Police Forces represented are Thames Valley, Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey. Hiro did a computer science degree and started work as an IT support Engineer. His role now is to support victims of cyber crime recover their accounts and help to create more resilient systems. He also does talks to groups like ours to help us be more resilient to cyber crime.
We generally do not realise the dangers of cyber crime. In the UK 56% of all reported crime is cyber crime and it costs the UK £27 billion annually. As individuals we lose about £3 billion annually. There are 8 billion people in the World and 4 billion have social media and half of those have 6 social medias. Social Medias involve sharing pictures and information about your self, this can be used by a Hacker to build up information about you. Most cyber crime starts off from social media and email addresses are freely available and phishing by messages being sent to addresses with innocent messages easily created even with deceptive send addresses looking like valid senders. They will entice you to provide information, download software and give them money. QR codes in public spaces can be can be covered by a fake QR code directing to a fake but convincing site set up by Hackers
Care should be taken with video cameras on your PC to ensure they are not hijacked by Hackers to threaten you over your google activities. Senders should be checked that you know the sender, if not then do not open the message.
A useful site is www.haveIbeenPwned to see whether your email address has been exposed to Hackers by hacks of commercial firms who have not reported they were hacked. Reusing a strong password is likely to eventually be hacked. The preferred password is to use three common words linked together to create a long password, the longer the better. Adding numbers and special characters make a password that would take many years to hack. It is now considered not to be sufficient to use strong passwords and Multi-factor authentication (MFA), also known as two-step verification, adds a layer of security to online accounts. Even this has problems called sim swap where hackers persuade your mobile phone provider to move your number to their sim so MFA is directed to them.
Another important action is to keep all your software up to date so any weakness found by the Supplier is removed as soon as possible. Another tip is to make all purchases online using a credit card rather than a bank account to get as much protection as possible.
'Action Fraud' (0300 123 2040) should be used to report any online fraud. For banking fraud dial 159 and you will be prompted to connect to the right bank. [email protected] should be emailed if you have found a phishing scam.
You should always believe nothing and confirm everything to remain safe.
