It’s that time of year again… the time of year when people are most likely to fall for some kind of parcel delivery-related scam. It’s understandable, given how many of us are getting deliveries from shopping online, or parcels from friends and relatives who want to make sure that your gift arrives in time for Christmas.
You’re probably familiar with how these scams work, but just in case you aren’t – you’ll receive a text message claiming to be from Royal Mail, or one of the parcel delivery companies like Evri, Yodel, Parcelforce, DPD, or a big shopping company like Amazon. The text will tell you that you need to pay extra for them to deliver your parcel, or that they couldn’t deliver it to you and they need to rebook, and they’ll give you a handy little link for you to do that… except that there is no parcel and the link is to a scam website where they’ll take your hard-earned money.
Here’s an example of a scam text that I received a while ago – I’ve marked some of the hints that give away that it’s a scam below:
A – This little ! sign tells me that my phone provider thinks that this might be dodgy.
B – This text has come from a random mobile number, rather than saying Evri or DPD or whoever at the top of the conversation. It’s also from a non-UK number, which would be odd for a UK-based delivery company.
C – This message from my phone provider tells me that it’s probably spam.
D – Scammers put the company name and a colon at the start of the message to try to sound genuine, whereas most companies don’t bother to do that, because their name will appear at the top of the conversation, instead of a random mobile number (see point B).
E – A dodgy-looking hyperlink that they want you to tap on – don’t do it! There’s no sign of the company name in the link (which would be unusual for an official website), and the part after the first “.” says “de”, which is the online country code for Germany. Again, a bit of an odd one for a British delivery company.
So how do you make sure that you don’t fall prey to one of these scams, without missing out on genuine texts from delivery companies? Well, I’ve compiled a few things to look out for, and what you can do instead of tapping on a link…
- Beware of random mobile numbers – genuine texts from Evri, DPD, Royal Mail etc will have the company name show up at the top of the conversation i.e. where the person’s name is, instead of just a random mobile number. For example, here’s a genuine text from FedEx:
The only exception to this is Amazon delivery drivers, where it will be a random phone number. However, texts from an Amazon driver will pretty much always look like this…
…and they’ll generally call you if they can’t find your house, or if you need to be in to receive and sign for the parcel. They won’t usually give you a link to tap on. - If you are expecting a delivery from some online shopping and you get a potentially dodgy text, don’t tap on the link straight away! Instead, go to your email inbox and find the confirmation email for your order. Check the details of which delivery company they use, and look for a “Track your parcel” link to see if the information they can give you matches the text message you’ve received.
- Or go to the courier company’s website, either on a different device, or by opening your web browser separately, and type in your order number or tracking number there. Here are the official sites:
If you’re pretty confident that you’ve received a scam message, you can report it as spam and forward it to Action Fraud. I’d only do this if you’re absolutely positive though.