The DVSA has issued an urgent warning to UK drivers after parking fine scam texts have targeted motorists. So, have you recently received a text message that read: ‘DVSA Notice For You: You have a parking pentathlon charge due…if you do not pay your fine on time, your car may be banned from driving…’ Well, this is a scam. One way to notice that this is indeed a scam is the fact that the DVSA, as the UK’s road safety and education body, do not deal with fines.
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00:00One thing that's worth pointing out though with this is that local councils will never
00:06send a text message or call you about a parking fine. A genuine ticket will be sent in the
00:11post and it'll include details of your car, the date and time that the offence occurred.
00:16So it'll be relevant to you and where you live and where you've been. And you'll also
00:21be given the chance to contest it. So a lot of these text messages that are going out,
00:25they don't give you that option. So if you're in doubt, contact the parking services department
00:31at the local council just to clarify before doing anything. Don't click any links or anything
00:35like that.
00:37Now the act of smishing is a technique used by criminals to target consumers with texts
00:42impersonating trusted organisations. It was reported by cyber security company Proofpoint
00:48that the most common types of smishing texts are parcel or package delivery scams.
00:54At the moment, so we've started to see a few different ones being reported. One that's
00:58closely linked to the car parking scam is bus lane scams, whereby people are receiving
01:03text message saying that they've been caught driving in a bus lane. And it works in very
01:07much the same way as the parking fine ones. And again, you wouldn't receive that if that
01:11was legitimate, it would come through the post. And we've also seen an increase in seasonal
01:17scams. So now that the weather's turning colder, obviously things like loft insulation is one
01:21of the biggest, and also a rise in delivery scams, which I know is, you know, spoken about
01:27a lot. With Christmas around the corner, it does seem to sort of peak. The scale of this
01:32problem is pretty staggering. And telephone fraud now makes up 43% of fraud cases. And
01:37it's a massive portion. And it really highlights how urgent it is to find sort of smarter,
01:42more adaptable solutions to protect, you know, protect people from these types of scams.
01:48On a positive and much more reassuring note though, many telecoms companies are using
01:52this very same technology to fight back and are working very hard to create tools to help
01:57people protect themselves.