Email apparently from Home Office warns of emails apparently from Home Office The Home Office has sent unsolicited emails to the public, warning that the Home Office will never send unsolicited emails to the public, and will not ask for personal information or passwords in an email. The lay-off happy government department warned the public to be wary of emails that appear to come from the Ministry of …
I didn't even have to open my last letter from the revenue as it wasn't sealed which wouldn't be too bad except that my post goes through a private office.
I cannot understand the revenue's hatred of email. I would much prefer to communicate with them via email. And yes I have received one of their two week notices more than two weeks after the documents' date.
> I cannot understand the revenue's hatred of email.
Or anything electronic for that matter. I recently convinced them to give me a refund in respect of job expenses, and my choices were
A) A cheque posted to my address or
B) Pay into bank sort code XX-XX-XX Account XXXXXXXXX
So I chose B, it's the twenty first century, and I can send money to another account in an hour without having to wait for banks to clear cheques, a process which which takes an annoying week (five working days, and you can't expect banks to work on weekends, despite the fact that I have for over twenty years now)
So, refund letter arrives, I check my bank. Nothing yet.
The following day, I check my bank. CHEQUE PAID IN A BOOTLE PAYMENT OPS
They paid in the cheque for me, but it still a *&(#$*ing cheque, and finally cleared today, a week after the letter they sent me.
while( !unconcious ) bang(head, wall);
There's a similar irony in the new car tax (VED) system. You pay for your car tax online, and you no longer have to display a tax disc. +10 for belated arrival in the 21st century. But if you sell your car you have to apply for a refund of the remaining tax, which is sent as a cheque in the post. -10 for lack of follow-through.
I suspect that the offices of HMRC and DVLA are still like offices used to be half a century ago. For anything to do with paying out money you have to go to a cashier's office where a grumpy old geezer behind a barred window grudgingly writes out cheques using a dip pen.
("CHEQUE PAID IN A BOOTLE PAYMENT OPS" - I bet the cheque would clear quicker if it wasn't in a bottle.)
@ Jim Howes
It is no accident. The DWP do the exact same thing only they mail the cheque to you. Despite the fact that you chose the option to get the money paid direct to your bank. The longer they keep your money, the more interest they make on it. When you get the cheque you have to walk to a branch and pay it in. They should be fined.
As we are mostly all techies and OCD logical, actually an email from source x reminding we should not trust an email is from source x, is completely fine, since the validity of the message is not dependent on the veracity of the source. Sorry, running counter to the humor and it is a funny article. Can't help myself. Sorry.
I always have a sense of dread when a letter arrives from the HMRC. Something about those brown envelopes stamped HMRC that fills me with fear and trepidation. Huge sense of relief if they just turn out to be a new tax code notification rather than a demand or fine for not submitting some document on time that I've never heard about.
Emails or letters from hackers would be far less worrying.
"Spaf's" net news article on faking net news articles from 1988. (Yes, I am that old since you ask.)
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=50maN7VmpusC&pg=PT331&dq=spaf+net+news+april+fools&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAGoVChMI9sPc6977xgIVSxUsCh1LcQPe#v=onepage&q=spaf%20net%20news%20april%20fools&f=false
"The Home Office has sent unsolicited emails to the public, warning [...] the public to be wary of emails that appear to come from the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office."
This degree of candor from a government department is quite a rarity. This would seem to mark a new and commendable level of government transparency.
I got from the IT bods when I did not promptly act on an email consisting entirely of an attached Word(tm) document, at the height of panic about Word(tm) macro viruses. "But it's from the CEO". "Yes, it says it is, but the same batch of email contained a penis-pill spam 'from' stevcase@aol.com". He did not get the connection.
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