Parking ticket by text - convincing scam

[Rolfe]

I just received a text demanding payment of a parking ticket. All the pages look kosher, but the url of the link from the text is gobbledegook, and the url of the page for payment is parkingca.top/billing and not a government url. It's only £20, which I found surprising because on previous occasions parking tickets have been £30 if paid within 14 days.

The date of the ticket is 17th September. That's the day I set off for my week-long road trip when I was sleeping in the car. I was racking my brains as to when I might have contravened a parking regulation that day, and at first wondered if it had been at the Fort William Tesla superchargers, where I hung around for a while, probably more than an hour, as I was talking to @Archev who was charging on the next post to me. If it had been that, I'd have paid up without querying it.

However I looked again at the ticket and the location was given as Penicuik. Penicuik is pretty close to where I live, but I can't remember being there on 17th September, certainly not in a stationary car. I left my own house first thing to drive to the cattery to deposit the cat, then returned. Penicuik not involved, and parking was off-road. The car then remained in my driveway being loaded up for the journey until I left at about 10.30.

My memory is that I then drove straight off to Fort William, at first on the A702 which certainly passes through the Penicuik local authority area, but I have no recollection of stopping anywhere on that journey. I did stop in the village here (West Linton) to make a few purchases for the trip, but there are few if any parking restrictions in the village and I didn't do anything out of the ordinary - just stopped outside the shops as usual. There is a single yellow line outside the Co-op but last time I looked it's only valid from 8.00 till 10.00, and people park there all the time.

More importantly, West Linton isn't Penicuik. West Linton is in the Borders local authority while Penicuik is in Midlothian. I can't see how a parking offence committed in West Linton could come to be recorded as happening in Penicuik.

But, the text came to my phone, and when I entered my car number I got this message saying I was due to pay £20, and the location of the alleged offence is a plausible one - not that far from where I live.

Is this a scam? Does anyone know?

 

[JimD]

Personally I wouldn't trust a parking penalty demand that came by phone. Once you entered your registration, a scammer could theoretically find out where the car was registered and tailor the location of the 'offence' to suit.

Check out the number that the text came from on 'who called me' and google the name of the company and check how they operate.

 

[Rolfe]

OK, I googled and got this.

DVSA issues warning about parking fine scam text messages

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is warning that scammers are sending text messages about fake DVSA parking penalty charges.

www.gov.uk

While the text of the message I received wasn't the same as the example on that page (and in particular didn't have a glaring mis-spelling), closer inspection revealed the English wasn't top-notch and several aspects rang warning bells. There was something about increasing and severe interest payments, which you wouldn't see in a real parking fine.

I reported the text as spam as instructed on that page, and blocked the number. At first blush it was quite a convincing scam though. The warning signs (if you didn't notice the rather unconvincing wording, as I didn't at first) were the very non-governmental urls, and the £20 demand which is not a usual parking fine amount. Also that I have never had an actual ticket on Caliban's windscreen, ever. Of course tickets can blow off or be removed, but I've never seen a parking warden in West Linton.

I think what's going on is that they induce you to enter your car reg number on the linked web page, which I did. Then somehow the setup finds a location, possibly from the location of the phone - my location often seems to show up as Penicuik when I'm connected to my home wifi, as I was at the time. They then fill that in on the pretty official-looking page, and hope to find people who have parked in that location and don't run the circumstances through their brain.

Be alert, forumites.

 

[JimD]

A relevant link - Drivers alerted of scam text messages about parking fines | RAC Drive

EDIT: I see you already have it.

 

[emmrecs]

My local authority Alert system sent me an email yesterday morning warning about this exact scam.

Yesterday evening the text arrived! Immediately deleted and the number reported.

 

[Rolfe]

The wording on the text I had was more convincing than the example given - in particular there was nothing about being banned from driving, which I would have immediately pegged as a fraud. It's notable that one's first reaction is to think that the ticket is genuine, and if the damn thing had said Fort William I might actually have paid it without really examining what was going on.

I'm fairly good at spotting scams, but it took about 15 minutes for me to realise that this one had multiple red flags and should be reported, not paid. But. No actual parking ticket. I hadn't been in the town in question on that day. URLs that weren't official government domains (the link from the text was just a string of letters and symbols). Wrong amount for a parking fine (maybe to get people to pay out of relief that it wasn't more?) Wording not typical of official communications when examined closely.

I did enter my car reg no, but didn't do anything more, then reported and blocked the number, so I don't think Í'm at any risk, They didn't get any bank details from me.

This reminds me of one I got a year or so ago purporting to be from the Post Office, wanting payment of a small amount to deliver a parcel they hadn't been able to deliver. The url alerted me, plus the fact that the PO don't charge small amounts to re-deliver a parcel. But I was expecting a parcel at the time, so I was fooled for a couple of minutes because the web page was so well constructed with the PO logo and so on.

 

[siteguru]

You will never ever get a parking ticket (council or private) issued via text - ever.

 

[dsimpkins]

My daugther received similar text yesterday. She sent me a screenshot, and my reply was scam, just delete it and block number.

Email version of this is known as Phishing. Via text it's known as Smishing. Latter is becoming more widespread as people become wiser about phishing scams.

 

[5teep]

The car park in Fort William where the Teslas are is not camera controlled so any parking ticket you get would be a physical one I think.

 

[Rolfe]

You will never ever get a parking ticket (council or private) issued via text - ever.

Indeed. But the first impulse is to believe it - maybe they changed their procedures or something? All the red flags were there on sober re-reading, but as you can see my first impulse was to wonder how I could possibly have stopped in a place that would have got me a parking ticket linked to Penicuik.

I think the thing is quite simple under the fancy coding. It wouldn't matter what (valid) car reg number you entered, you'd just get a notice showing a fairly recent date and a location scraped from the phone. Mine was on my home wifi at the time, and that comes up as being in Penicuik for some reason, even though it isn't.

 

[Rolfe]

The car park in Fort William where the Teslas are is not camera controlled so any parking ticket you get would be a physical one I think.

Yeah, that's what I thought at the time. In fact after I unplugged I said to Archev, better move, this is where they get you for idle fees, occupying the bay when not charging. Then I looked around and said hey, how would they know I'm still in the bay anyway? (Then a Tesla showed up and clocked that two bays were blocked by people charging on the wrong side - naughty Archev - and I immediately pulled out of the space to let him in.)

 

[5teep]

Yeah, that's what I thought at the time. In fact after I unplugged I said to Archev, better move, this is where they get you for idle fees, occupying the bay when not charging. Then I looked around and said hey, how would they know I'm still in the bay anyway? (Then a Tesla showed up and clocked that two bays were blocked by people charging on the wrong side - naughty Archev - and I immediately pulled out of the space to let him in.)

I've seen the parking wardens walk around there a few times but I don't know how often they visit. They rock up in a white council van and do a tour, marking down numbers and times etc.

 

[Archev]

I’m now in the aforementioned Fort William. As I threaded down through Glencoe my thoughts landed on my due medications - yep - I’ve left them all at home ??
So I’m in Boots the chemist phoning my surgery asking if they can email my prescription to this lovely helpful Polish Chemist who is going to fix it for me.
Honestly, I’d forget my head if I didn’t tie a knot in my hanky to remi …… ah OK moving on ?‍

 

[Rolfe]

They'll sort it. It's nothing to the shenanigans that happened when we were snowed in here and my mother needed more eye drops and the village chemist didn't have the ones she usually used in stock.

 

[Ian Key]

You will never ever get a parking ticket (council or private) issued via text - ever.

Exactly. How do they know your mobile number?

 

[Rolfe]

All of that is fine if you stop and think rationally about it. But when you're used to being notified of doctor's appointments and invited to blood transfusion sessions and so on by text, it doesn't seem so incongruous when you first open it.

The thing has multiple red flags all over it, nevertheless the immediate instinct is to believe that it's genuine.

 

[Nicko]

Unless it comes by post I ignore them and report as scam

 

[Rolfe]

You're quite right, of course.

 

[Archev]

All of that is fine if you stop and think rationally about it. But when you're used to being notified of doctor's appointments and invited to blood transfusion sessions and so on by text, it doesn't seem so incongruous when you first open it.

The thing has multiple red flags all over it, nevertheless the immediate instinct is to believe that it's genuine.

Yes I smelled a rat on a phone call recently and just made an excuse and hung up.
Turned out it was actually genuine but - play safe eh?

 

[siteguru]

A what phone call? ?