The
UK government have decided to warn people of a scam which
has been going on for many years. Certain sites are charging
for access to Government sites and information which is normally
free. This is not restricted just to UK government sites,
but to my knowledge most of the English speaking governments,
and probably others as well.
These sites often appear to be Government sites and usually
appear at the top of the search engines, but are in actual
fact simply gateway pages which charge you, then give you
access to the Government free sites.
The charge can be a one off charge of up to £40 to look
at the Land Registry site; other bogus sites charge you for
so many visits to any site in advance. [10 coupons for £30
to access any Government site.]
Premium rate phone lines are also used, to help you reach
the free site you are being conned into paying for.
A lot of the information that was available to the public
is no longer being updated. For example: DirectGov
– Real Help last update. 12/05/2010. A boost for
the scammers.
Some government sites do actually charge for their services,
which makes it very difficult to spot this scam. One point
which may help is to look at the web address in the search
engines, although even this can be ‘cloaked ‘[
this means that when you click on the link, you are sent to
a different site to the one listed in the search engine] The
techniques used by fraudsters are good enough to fool the
search engines. One other thing to look out for is that Government
sites do not pay for advertising, so avoid those sites which
have a coloured background, or are listed in the side panel.
These are paid for adverts.
The Office of Fair Trading is investigating these sites. Cavendish
Elithorn, a Director at the OFT said: “It is important
that companies are clear about the service they are offering,
and do not trick people into paying for something that they
can get for free or much cheaper on government websites. We
will be considering whether any of the sites under investigation
are misleading consumers.”
