Staffordshire Police
Convincing TV licence email scam you need to know about
It could leave people seriously out of pocket, make sure you don't get caught out
Fraudsters are sending fake TV licensing emails (Image: PA)
A convincing TV licence scam which sees people being told they have not paid and their licence will be cancelled is doing the rounds.
The scam is being sent out via email and warns the recipient that their direct debit has been cancelled and they are about to have their TV licence cancelled
The email will be titled 'Your Direct Debit has been cancelled' and looks official, but is not.
Staffordshire Police has now sent out a warning in the bid to make people aware that the email is a scam and an attempt to get people's personal information. Anyone who is in doubt is asked to call the TV Licence team to get 100 per cent confirmation, said a spokesman. Never call a phone number contained in one of these emails, one people suspect is a con.
The force has also offered a handy tip to check whether an email is fraudulent.
People are advised to look where the email address of the sender is which will usually be in black.
When they click on the email address it will turn blue and when they click a second time it will reveal the address of the person who sent it and in the case of scams, will then show that it is not official and from the government body.
An example of how a fraudulent email address would look is root@smtp2.rapidns.com.