National Trading Standards takes part in the annual Scams Awareness Month
National Trading Standards participated in the Scams Awareness Month 2016 campaign. The campaign encouraged consumers to ‘Be Scam Aware’ and urged them to take a moment and trust their gut instinct so that they would get advice, report scams and tell others about their experiences.
During Scams Awareness Month the National Trading Standards Scams Team announced that 750,000 pieces of scam mail had been prevented from entering the UK postal system in the last three months and warned people to be aware of the risk of becoming a mail scam victim. The Team also urged to consumers to look out for signs that they are receiving scam mail such as:
- A foreign return address
- An offer of a big pay out in return for a small purchase or administration fee
- Requests for personal details in order to claim a prize
- A letter claiming you’ve won a lottery that you didn’t enter
- Letters from a psychic or clairvoyant offering their services for a fee
- An offer that seems too good to be true
Our full Scams Awareness Month 2016 press release can be found here.
Notes to Editors
About National Trading Standards
National Trading Standards delivers national and regional consumer protection enforcement. Its Board is made up of senior and experienced heads of local government trading standards from around England and Wales with an independent Chair. Its purpose is to protect consumers and safeguard legitimate businesses by tackling serious national and regional consumer protection issues and organised criminality and by providing a “safety net” to limit unsafe consumer goods entering the UK and protecting food supplies by ensuring the animal feed chain is safe.