Parking Fine Scams and others

I thought it best to start a new thread on this as the other ones I have posted are fairly old now.

There is a spate of parking fine scams going around at the moment.

Most of them are sent by text or email and all of those are scams.

Real Penalty Charge Notices or parking charge notices must be sent to you by letter through the post.

The letter will be addressed to you personally and will include your vehicle registration number, details about where and when the parking contravention happened, and will often include photos of where your car was parked.

Parking fines are issued based on your car's registration number and the name and address your vehicle is registered to. Local authorities and companies that issue PCNs or parking charge notices do not have access to your phone number or email address, so they can't contact you using those details.

Remember that all parking fine notices are always called a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) or a parking charge notice, not a ‘parking penalty charge.’

Here's a link to the National Cyber Security Centre where you should report all scams. This link gives you a lot of information.

Report a scam text

'Spear-fishing' is also becoming much more prevalent. This is where scammers have got your info from social media (too many people share their info on their social media and it is very easy to get hold of as most people don't protect it) or they get it through sites that have been hacked.

This method of scam targets you using your personal info and tries to extort money from you.