A TV Licence currently costs £169.50 per year but being tricked by fraudsters posing as the Licensing agency could cost you far far more. Last November one case saw one woman losing £20,000 through an elaborate scam that started with one response to a fake email she believed was from TV Licensing.
The official agency has highlighted 5 tell-tale signs that could indicate whether an email is genuine or a scam. It also warned that recent email spoofing trends have seen fraudsters manipulating their email address so it looks like the official TV Licensing email address.
Sender
For a genuine email, you should be able to see the sender is TV Licensing with the email address [email protected] or [email protected]. If either of these don’t match it’s likely a fraudulent email.
Postcode
The licensing agency explained: “If you have provided us with your postcode details, our emails will include part of your postcode and/or the name on the licence.” For example, this could show your postcode as ***2CD.
Your name
TV Licensing assured it will refer to customers using only their title and last name, for example ‘Ms Abc’. Scammers likely won’t have this information so they might address you as ‘Dear customer/client’ or even use your email address as your name.
Spelling and grammar
A common mistake scammers make across email and text scams is having bad spelling and grammar. Even with the growing use of AI in fraudulent messages, the phrasing is usually odd including things like incorrect punctuation or random capitalisation.
Links
The agency warned Brits to be wary of any emails promising money or refunds, particularly if it requires you to click on a link to access it. This is usually followed by a request for your banking details but TV Licensing assured: “We would never process a refund in this way.”
Instead, you can check if links in an email are genuine by hovering over it on a computer without clicking on it. This will reveal the web address it will send you to.
If you’re using a smartphone or tablet you can press and hold the link to see the web address but don’t release it while still on the link. The only real web addresses used by TV Licensing are tvlicensing.co.uk or spp.tvlicensing.co.uk.
If a scam email claims you’re behind on payments or risk having your licence expire, you can sign into your TV Licensing account on the official website to check this. If you’ve already entered personal details or have clicked a suspicious link you can report this to Action Fraud.
You can also report a scam email to [email protected] and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) will investigate. If you’re worried you might have given your banking details to a fraudster it’s best to get in touch with your bank as soon as possible.