Category: Announcements

Turkey/Syria Earthquakes

Beware of fake donation accounts for the Turkey-Syria earthquake

If you’re considering donating to victims of the Turkey-Syria earthquake, keep in mind that scammers are always lurking to take advantage of such a crisis.

On social media, we’ve found pages, posts and videos containing misleading or false information about the earthquake. This is in an attempt to get people to send funds, including Bitcoin and NFT donations.

Phoney HMRC tax refund emails

Fraudsters are impersonating HMRC and sending phoney tax refund emails. The emails include a link to ‘claim’ your refund. And if you click on the link, you’ll be taken to a website that puts you at risk of giving away your personal details to a scammer.

It is helpful to know that HMRC will never send specific tax information (such as how much you owe or any rebates due to you) by email, so if you receive this email you can rest assured that it’s a scam.

Fake People’s Postcode Lottery letters

If you receive a letter claiming that you’ve won thousands in the People’s Postcode Lottery, it’s important to take a moment to ensure you’re not being targeted by a scammer.

This scam letter includes the People’s Postcode Lottery logo and branding and claims that your postcode has been randomly selected from the electoral roll database. You’re asked to call a number to claim your prize which is when the scammer will phish your personal details.

Amazon Prime scam

Scammers are impersonating Amazon to get access to your device.

These scam calls involve fraudsters telling consumers that their Amazon Prime subscription is increasing in price or expiring. If you say you want to cancel, you’ll be asked to download remote access software such as AnyDesk. This is a genuine program that fraudsters sometimes use to exploit victims. Once you download the program, the scammer will be able to access your device and steal your information or install malware.

ALWAYS BEWARE, CRIMINALS LURK EVERYWHERE.

Welcome to our website.  Thankfully warmer weather seems to be settling in, let’s hope we can turn the heating down and try and get back to some type of financial normality.

As always, please book in at the desk on arrival and as importantly for Health and Safety, ensure you sign yourselves out if leaving early.

Please try and wear your name badges and turn off or silence your mobiles during the meeting.

March has well and truly arrived with many relevant dates, the 1^st March is our committee meeting and St David’s Day for the Welsh among us and 17^th, St Patrick’s Day for our Irish members. The 14^th is the Ides of March, so beware if you have any Roman heritage!

For those of you still with mothers don’t forget the 19^th, which is Mothering Sunday. The 20^th is the Spring Equinox, also known as the Vernal Equinox, the official start of Spring, looking forward to all of the spring flowers and warmer weather to brighten up our lives. And of course, if out in the countryside watch out for those mad March hares! We have seen a few in the fields off Narrow Lane when walking the dogs.

Finally, don’t forget to put the clocks forward on Saturday night 25^th, as British Summer Time starts at 2.00am on Sunday 26^th. Often funny at church, as one or two families always forget and turn up at the end of the service.

Great to see so many at the February meeting, John and Christine Berrill having to put out additional cups. A big thank you to John and Chris for all their hard work every meeting.

For those renewing their membership at the meeting, I hope that you found our new card readers useful, we are hoping to make more use of them in the future to pay for our activities and reduce the amount of cash collected. Thanks to Gary our treasurer for sorting this out.

Don’t forget to buy your tickets for the Social Sub Committee’s next event, which is on 1^st April (no not an April Fools joke) ‘The Irish Night’ starring ‘Kelly’s Hero’s’, cost is only £8.00p, bring your own food and fancy dress is optional. Should be another great night. Again, special thanks to the SSC for all of their hard work and planning.

Look forward as always to meeting you all at March’s meeting.

Melvyn Francis, Chair

We held a meeting for Group Leaders at the end of February and our committee came along too.

We have 46 groups in our u3a, which are led by 36 people and the majority of them attended the meeting. They do a great job on our behalf, and this isn’t always an easy job.

We looked at the updated u3a ‘Guidance for Group Leaders’, with input from our Chairman, Membership Secretary, Business Secretary and Treasurer. Group Leaders were given the opportunity to ask questions on Membership, our u3a administration system (Beacon), Health and Safety and the Financing of groups.

We then divided into 5 groups to look at 6 hypothetical scenarios. They were based on potential problems that might occur in a group. They certainly created some lively discussion and as there was no right or wrong answer everyone took part!!

It was good to meet, and we plan to come together again in the summer.

Sue Tedstone (Groups’ Coordinator)

Police Scam

It is someone phoning up and pretending to be a police officer and telling the person that they have caught someone who had a lot of money on them. They then go on to say that they believe that the person they have phoned has been subject to a fraud.  They are very convincing, giving out their police number and giving them a crime number etc. and then get their bank details.

PayPal ‘money request’ email scam

Scammers are exploiting PayPal’s ‘request money’ feature to scare customers into calling dodgy phone numbers and giving away their personal data.   

This scam involves fraudsters sending fake emails requesting payments for high-value items, or posing as HMRC to demand ‘overdue’ tax payments. If you call the number in the email, you’ll be ringing a scammer phishing for your personal information.

Microsoft impersonation scam 

Scammers are impersonating Microsoft in dodgy emails telling recipients they must update their Hotmail password. 

If you click the link in this email, you’ll ultimately be asked to enter your email address and password on a website that uses fake Hotmail branding. And if you enter your details, you’ll be giving scammers access to your emails. 

ALWAYS BEWARE, CRIMINALS  LURK EVERYWHERE.

I trust you have all now fully recovered from your Christmas and New Year’s celebration.
Quite a lot of coughs and bad chests doing the rounds at the moment, please ensure you wrap up warm both indoors and outdoors. The increased energy costs are not helping people’s heath at the moment, what with the many ‘cold snaps’ we are experiencing. Thankfully covid, although still present, seems to be on the wane, helped by both the jabs and natural immunity. As I have said, please try and keep warm.

A few of us went to the Chinese New Year Celebration meal at the Springwater Cantonese Restaurant in Calverton, organised by Terry Hardman of Sutton u3a for the Notts Network. It was a very good evening and the ‘eat as much as you want ‘ menu proved very popular. Ordering five selections from the menu for the table at a time, after a couple of rounds of starters and mains, we soon had to loosen our belts.

We were then entertained by a traditional Chinese dragon/lion dance with music accompaniment which had everyone reaching for their cameras. The evening ended with an outdoor firework display with all the normal oohhs and aahhs.

Well organised Terry, if repeated next year, I would strongly recommend it to you.

Our next monthly meeting will be a week later than normal on the third Wednesday of the month – Wednesday 15th February, 2023.
This later meeting is due to the John Godber Centre holding CAMRA’s Hucknall Beer and Cider Festival on 10th to the 12th of February and having to set up the main hall during the week beforehand. Again, this is a good event, well worth visiting as I am sure our Real Ale Group are aware.

After our successful individuals fund raising for Hucknall’s Food Bank (£320 plus much food) several folks have asked if they can still bring food to the monthly meeting, please do and we will make sure that it is delivered to the food bank.

As always, please book in at the desk on arrival and as importantly for Health and Safety, ensure you sign yourselves out if leaving early. Please try and wear your name badges and turn off or silence your mobiles during the meeting.

I have been asked by a couple of our members to relay a thanks to the organisers of the Singalong Group for a very enjoyable Tuesday meeting in January, well done Phil & Liz.

Look forward as always to meeting you all at February’s meeting.

Melvyn Francis, Chair