Stay alert to scams, phishing and fake news

We want to make students aware of the dangers of online scams and give you a few helpful tips when trying to identify probing emails or texts.

Unfortunately students are often targeted with phishing e-mails, particularly when student finance payments are due to be paid, but you can be targeted at any time either directly or on mass via social media platforms etc.

What is it?

What we’re talking about is any message you receive telling you that you need to pay something, you’re due a rebate or refund for something (a thing or a service) you’ve already paid for, or you need to validate your bank details.

In short you should ignore messages that tell you to provide any personal, security or banking details unless you are making a purchase from a trusted source you know. Certainly none of the funding authorities such as SFE, SLC, Student Finance Wales and SAAS or any authentic bank would ever request for students to provide or confirm their information in this way. But this can be tricky as the modern scammers are very clever, using logos we are familiar with and email addresses which look perfectly plausible.

We are aware of a scam doing the rounds at the moment telling students they are due a TV license rebate. It looks something like this:

This is an official notification from TV Licensing!

We would like to notify you that after the last annual calculation we have determined that you are eligible to receive a TV Licensing refund of 128.20 GBP.

Due to invalid account details records, we were unable to credit your account.

Please fill in the TV Licensing refund request and allow us 3-7 working days for the amount to be credited to your account. Go to “Refund form” and follow the steps in order to have us process your request.

TV Licensing Ticket#: 21330

Expiration date: 27 September 2018

Note: For security reasons, we will record your IP Address, the date and time. Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued.

This message was accompanied with the genuine TV license logo:

At the first glance this looks genuine, however the wording doesn’t feel right, the tone isn’t correct and they wouldn’t use this wording ‘Deliberate wrong inputs’ and ‘Expiration date’. Also, they wouldn’t end their opening statement with an exclamation mark!

Another clue is their email address: TVLicensing <vbaskerville@comcast.net> This is clearly not a genuine company.

You should always check with the organisation direct by searching for their registered details and ask them if ther correspondence is genuine as they will want to know that scammers are using them as a lure.

You can find practical guidance on how you can safeguard your student finance. This will also tell you what to do if you think you’ve received any communication that  is suspicious, or you’re concerned about the safety of your account. If you have responded to a student finance phishing e-mail, you should change your account password asap  and forward the phishing e-mail to Phishing@slc.co.uk

As for other excellent guidance and advice on phishing in general, have a look at Action Fraud UK 

But please let us reassure you, these incidents are in the minority

If you are aware of other scams, please tell us we can let other students know about it

Best wishes

Student Advice Service