Scam Alert: Fake Age UK Offers

A series of scams are currently running using the Age UK (national charity) branding to try and scam people out of their data (including bank details), and money, putting them at risk of financial loss and identity theft.

The scams generally seem to be presenting themselves as offers of a "Wellness Upgrade" or a "Health Pack", or even a request to take a survey with the promise of a gift referred to as a "Health Monitoring Pack".

These have been arriving to preople via emails, texrt messages and other means such as pop up adverts and on sites that don't check their advertising, such as certain social media platforms.

Often scam texts and the like, such as the one below have spelling or other errors. "Age-UK Sends You a Health Kiit" - the misspelling of kit and the introduction of a hyphen between Age and UK very much suggests this was not from Age UK.

" ...the misspelling of kit and the introduction of a hyphen between Age and UK very much suggests this was not from Age UK."

One key givaway is that the messages, ads or emails take you to a website that doesn't have "ageuk.org.uk" or similar (e.g, ageuk.co.uk, ageukbirmingham.org.uk, ageukbirmingham.co.uk, ageuksandwell.org.uk etc.) in the domain address. 

It's highly unlikely you would ever see anything addresses to "Dear Age UK Customer" because if we, or the national Age UK charity are contacting you directly, it's because you have given consent to do so and thus we know who you are to address it more appropriately.

"For instance, this one to the right has the domain address "idphaneromania.yachts" which is certainly not Age UK related."

Suffice to say that none of the images of such communication on this page are legitimate, and should be treated as scam, junk or "phishing" (Phishing a term used to decribe where a scammer is trying to catch data by luring in the victim whilst using images, websites and other assets to suggest they are a trusted brand - e.g. pretending to by Microsoft to get your Microsoft log in details, or in this case trying to pretend they are Age UK to get your bank, credit card and/or personal details, putting you at further risk.

If you are in any doubt that any message, or other communication is actually from Age UK, or Age UK Birmingham, check our websites for any information ( www.ageuk.org.uk or www.ageukbirmingham.org.uk or www.ageuksandwell.org.uk as appropriate) or contact us directly by phone (0121 437 0033), or by email: info@ageukbirmingham.org.uk. Stay safe.

The following are more images we have been sent of marketing that is not from Age UK or any of the local brand partners such as Age UK Birmingham:

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