Scammer energy calls

So a friend got a call when I was around and so overheard I heard much of it (she was quite happy that I did), and then hopefully I have reassured her that it was indeed a scam.

But it is hard work.

They somehow claimed to be from her energy company, now I did not hear the start exactly, i.e. if she gave away the name of the company or they knew/guessed.

The gist of the call was simple, they were supposedly over due paying, and would be cut off tomorrow (Sunday). The caller claimed they had stopped a direct debit, and were now £6000 in arrears, which had to be paid.

Now my friend was not totally stupid, she asked them to confirm the customer number, and they did. That is the scary bit. Now, I have no idea if energy companies have some system allowing details for things like that for take overs and so or that allow this information to be obtained, or if, perhaps, previously they had managed a call and extracted this, or a data leak or what. But she did what seems to be a very reasonable check.

The problem is, and this is where scammers have a good chance of something like this, there is an issue with the smart meter not reporting properly, and so they have done estimated bills and been told readings. Sadly this is what makes the scam more plausible - months of estimated readings could be a sudden surprise bill.

This was very upsetting, but she said to email the statement please. She did not go for the pay over the phone so as to avoid being cut off next day. One of the main reasons she did not fall for it is that the scammers did not know that £6000 was, in this case, implausible. Had it been electricity not gas, maybe, but no way for gas in their case.

Now, checking carefully - step one, googling the CLI says SCAMMER, which is a clue.

Checking on-line energy bill accounts, DDs working, last DD a couple of days ago, no outstanding balance. Yes, estimated readings but checking and they are actually within around £10 of reality. So clearly a scam. Also a tad unlikely coming to cut off on a Sunday, and a tad unlikely an overdue account without any statements or demands first.

But some people would have been fooled. Indeed, had it been a few hundred, my friend may have been, even.

I am, however, surprised such scams work - how do they get the money? A card payment could be clawed back, surely. A bank transfer would not match the name or the known bank details. How do scammers actually make money out of this?

So watch out there please.

Laws

When I was growing up, I learned that there were laws.

These were not simply rules or views of people like my parents or teachers, but something more. Laws were things that somehow defined the moral, and immutable set of rules for life. If you broke laws there were police that would take you away and lock you up.

Over time one realises that laws are not quite so concrete. For a start, they change, and new laws come in and old laws are repealed or changed.

The idea that something today may be illegal tomorrow, or the other way around, is crazy. It is how it works, but that is, well, just mental, how can a thing change from "right" to "wrong" or "wrong" to "right" just because we have moved on in time?

What I later learned is that these laws we all follow are created by, well, just people. And they are not people that have a lot of training, and learning, and credentials, and academic achievement or qualifications in their field. They are created by people that happened to win a local popularity contest in their constituency, working with others that have the same credibility. There is no qualification needed to make laws. There is no test. There is no exam. You literally have to win a local popularity contest to be an MP, and MPs can literally make new laws.

That, in itself, in insane, sorry. I mean some of them are sensible, and some even qualified. I have known some MPs that seriously know what they are doing. But "running the country" and, importantly, "making laws" has no qualifications needed. It is amateurs that won a local popularity contest, that is it.

So is there a better system?

Environmental monitoring

The new Faikin Remote have sold a few, nice. Thank you. Now on Tindie, and more coming soon. The BLE linking to Faikin is working really well now.

But ironically more have sold not as Faikin Remote, so far, but as environmental monitors. The boards have pressure, temperature (via many means), humidity, and CO₂.

What is even more amusing is that the monitoring is probably best done using my generic display signage code (EPD) as it has all the sensor code to allow display of the values. No link to Faikin, but links to Home Assistant, and simple http polling, and so on, for all sensors.

Irony on top of that is I have had to just make a version of my display code for no display, a blind version, as it is ideal for this monitoring application even when you have no display (data centres, etc).

Home and office monitoring of CO₂ levels is becoming more important as people realise how much of an impact a lack of fresh air really has.