On Line Scams

Again we seem to be bombarded with scams where ever we look – if scammers’ put as much energy into legitimate businesses I am sure they would be sitting on a small fortune by now! Scams are becoming more like buses, with the same style all circulating at the same time (do you think they have underground meetings, like bus depots of old and just follow one another out? No neither do I – they just lack originality, hence the reason they can’t do anything legitimate with their time!).

There are more Internet scams on the go, concentrating on the on line refund and your ability to claim. The 1st informs you that if you have been misfortunate to have suffered from on line fraud (that’s rich coming from a scam merchant!) the Bank of England (under Government instructions) will compensate you for this – surely that will convince you that it is a real service? As usual you are asked to part with valuable banking information, however with this one you have the opportunity to try and get the scammers’ tracked down!

www.ic3.gov is the American ‘Internet Crime Complaint Centre’ and have asked that should you receive an Email concerning entitlement to refunds being given out (concerning on line fraud) by the Bank of England, they would like to know about it via the above website.

The 2nd on line scam concerns the person who contacts you to let you know he holds the same Domain Name as you, only with a .com or .co.uk but would be happy to sell it to you for approximately $200!

I received an Email regarding a Domain I owned and put it straight into my spam box, however a friend of mine got himself in a real flap when he got a similar one as he was convinced he would lose his website and wanted to know the feasibility of buying the other suffixes for his Domain?

Now this one could be a legitimate business idea that may not even be illegal, but none the less it may be obtaining money out of genuine hard working business owners, who are panicked into believing they have to hold every complete web address to save their website?

Causing money to be relinquished to the person contacting them or even inducing a panic buy from a Domain store, of every last web address for their Domain is an underhanded activity as far as I am concerned and one that people should be made aware of! Hopefully it will prevent them from being parted with hard earned cash on needless transactions (I wonder how many different suffixes can be added to 1 Domain and how much it would cost [approx.] to ensure only you owned anything that resembled your Domain.anything?).

This next one continues to do the rounds and refers back to the discs that went ‘missing’, along with the Family Allowance details of thousands of people. You receive an Email to let you know that your name was found to be included on the missing discs and due to this you are entitled to claim compensation in the way of a one off payment into your account. Like many other’s that have gone before, you are asked to follow the link and enter your account details, I didn’t think anyone fell for these one’s any more so was very surprised to see it in my inbox (unless of course I missed it the first 20 times round the globe?).

At the end of the day the SNUK Blog, as with most Blogs out there will continue to up-date you as and when scams appear on the scene. Until they begin to fade out we can only hope to reach as many people as possible with this information – it is then up to yourself to network it further and inform more and more people to prevent them becoming another statistic.

Cheers

Kim

Business Crime and OUR Response

Have you ever had a crime (anything from verbal abuse right up to substantial theft of property) committed against:

• You and your business?
• Your business premises?
• Your staff members?

Did you report it to the police to be investigated? If you didn’t, why didn’t you?

Did you think it too small to worry about? Did you feel that, for whatever reason it may not be investigated? Did you feel there were insufficient police officers, with the ability or specialist training, available to deal with your specific business crime? Did you think it would involve too many working hours?

If there is indeed a lack of specialist, dedicated police officers for business crime should we the business community accept any responsibility for this?

Approximately only 1 in 8 business crimes are reported to the police! With reported incidents so low we must seriously consider the impact these findings have on the amount of police resources being made available to combat business crime!

How is it rectified? WE REPORT CRIME – EVERY TIME!

Businesses should accept a degree of responsibility for reduced police numbers available! If we do not report criminal activity (no matter how trivial) we will never know the extent and type of corporate crime occurring in any specific area? If the crime statistics are not available how can anyone cater for the number of officers or the specific areas of training required by police forces to combat corporate crime?   

A national campaign is being jointly managed (Northumbria Coalition Against Crime and the FSB) to encourage businesses to:

1. Continue to call 999 in an emergency (or the local police if non urgent)
2. To report criminal activity on-line!

You can help yourself and your community by going on-line, reporting the incident and helping to formulate the statistics we require to back the request for more police officers to be trained in business crime. Every incident, from damage to your business property to crimes that are difficult to classify as either ’Criminal or Civil’ (the kind true con-men like to work on; deciding if the case belongs with your solicitor or the police can itself be sole destroying) should be reported.

For more information and an on-line ‘Reporting’ Form please go to:

http://www.thecoalition.org.uk/ecet 

http://www.fsb.org.uk/ecet

http://www.businesscrimecentre.org.uk/ecet

It can take many business hours collecting all the information needed to report a corporate crime - however at the end of the day unless We Report Crime Every Time we will only have ourselves to blame when there are insufficient police officers to cover our area and those available are unable to concentrate on preventing corporate crime as they are too busy trying to catch the corporate criminal!

Business Rates

On April 1st 2008 the Small Business Bonus Scheme was introduced in Scotland to replace the Small Business Rates Relief Scheme.

The Scottish Government have introduced the new scheme in a bid to help the true “Small” business! Rates are responsible for the largest proportion of the outgoings in many small businesses and paying them damages their profit margins; more so than the larger businesses, who have a greater turnover enabling them to cover their rates easier.

The introduction of a scheme, specifically designed to keep more money in the bank of  the small business, aims to level the profit margins between small and medium size enterprises and will hopefully allow the business community to benefit as a whole?

With less money to pay out on your rates you have more money to invest in your growth or help you to sustain your business in the current economical climate!

Over the next year this scheme will progressively help those enterprises with properties where the combined ratable value is £15,000 or less.

It is delivered in three different categories and they will apply:

up to £8,000

£8,001 – £10,000 

£10,001 – £15,000

To discover more about the new scheme and to see if it applies to you, please visit:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/212130/0056430.pdf

Tendering Opportunities

The following information is of vital importance to small businesses attempting to bid for contracts in the public sector. It is the latest initiative to encourage smaller enterprises to see the possibilities open to them and promote the opportunities of possible new contracts within a sector that many may never have considered before.

In our bid to introduce some of the many different formats of Business Networking we are asking smaller businesses to look closer at the ‘Supply 2 Gov’ route and how it may benefit them.

Not all contracts are for single enterprise bids and in some cases the smaller business may find it highly beneficial to themselves and other local businesses if they were to tender for a contract together! Some contracts can be bid for by a ‘Team’ made up of separate local business owners who know that jointly they have all the abilities required to compete for the contract should they pull resources, this makes sense for individual growth and also long-term stability of the local economy.

Please read what ‘Supply2Gov’ have written and find out more by visiting their website – but remember you have very little time left to take advantage of the FREE trial - Good luck from all in the SNUK Office.

Supply2.gov.uk- the official lower-value (typically below £100,000) contract opportunities portal – was created by the Government to reduce the barriers facing SMEs competing for public sector contracts, enabling small businesses to grow and stay competitive. By registering on Supply2.gov.uk you can select a free location and benefit from:

• Daily email notification of Government contract opportunities relevant to your business
• Promotion of your company to the public sector market
• On-line contract search facility
• Resources to assist you when tendering
• Market intelligence

Until 31 July 2008, new registrants can benefit from access to lower-value opportunities throughout the whole of the UK – free for 3-months

 

The free trial is part of the Department for Business’ Enterprise Strategy released in March, which outlined new measures to increase the amount of government business that is won by small firms. To register for the 3-month free national upgrade trial and for further information please visit www.supply2.gov.uk before 31 July 2008.