Every year burglary tends to increase during the autumn months as the afternoons get darker, making it easier to identify unoccupied homes, which are often left unlit. Residents can make their homes more secure by following some basic crime prevention advice such as:
 Use timer switches on a lamp, radio or TV set so that they turn on as it gets dark in the
afternoons.
 Make a habit of checking that ground floor windows and doors are closed and locked when you leave the house or go to bed. Upstairs windows should be locked when the house is unoccupied.
 PVC doors must be locked by lifting the handle and turning the key to ensure all the
security features are in place.
 Car and house keys should be kept out of sight in a safe place. Don’t leave them on display on window sills, in porches, hallways or kitchens.
Secure your rear garden by shutting and locking any gates. Burglars can use garden tools, like ladders to break in, so make sure you securely lock away any tools after use.

The banking industry and the UK Government are joining forces this week to launch the next phase of the Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign. The campaign – which is run jointly by the Home Office and Financial Fraud Action UK, part of UK Finance, with support from the banking industry – shows the public how to recognise scams and confidently challenge any requests for personal or financial details using the simple phrase ‘My money? My info? I don’t think so’.

This comes as criminals increasingly use sophisticated impersonation scams to trick customers into giving away their personal or financial information. In these scams fraudsters contact customers by phone, email or text pretending to represent a trusted organisation, such as a bank, and request further information such as a full password or PIN. This information is then used by criminals to access customer accounts, withdraw money or make card payments. Fraudsters also scam customers into transferring money directly into a safe account or into the account of a supposed trusted organisation.

The Take Five campaign highlights these scams to help the public recognise them; and encourages everyone to question uninvited approaches and never give out personal or financial details.

Katy Worobec, Head of Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention, Cyber and Data Sharing at UK Finance, said: “Tackling fraud is a top priority for the entire industry. Our Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign in partnership with the Home Office will make sure customers know what to do to stay safe from the latest scams. Through the campaign we want to encourage all customers to remember to Take Five by saying ‘My money? My info? I don’t think so’.”

Security Minister Ben Wallace said: “Fraud remains a widespread problem and there is more to be done to prevent criminals from ruthlessly targeting people and businesses for their hard-earned money. The Joint Fraud Taskforce sees Government, law enforcement and industry working together to tackle some of the toughest fraud issues in order to protect the public. The national Take Five campaign will raise further awareness of how people can take simple steps to protect themselves against scams.”

How to stay safe from fraud

Take Five urges customers to help stay safe from fraud by following this simple advice:

• A genuine bank or organisation will never contact you asking for your PIN, full password or to move money to a safe account.
• Never give out personal or financial information. Always contact the company directly using a known email or phone number.
• Don’t be tricked into giving a fraudster access to your details. Never automatically click on a link in an unexpected email or text.
• Always question uninvited approaches, in case it’s a scam.

You can find out more about the campaign, and get advice on how to beat the fraudsters by visiting the Take Five website(opens in a new window), and following Take Five on Facebook(opens in a new window) and Twitter(opens in a new window), and don’t forget to share the posts.

Now that the evenings are drawing in, the Police have reminded residents to leave a light on, on use a timer switch, when they are away from home. There have been a couple of burglaries in neighbouring villages.

From Neighbourhood Watch:

Working with our partners to tackle cybercrime

Staying secure online can often seem complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. The Government’s Cyber Aware campaign, which follows advice and technical expertise from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, offers the following simple advice to help you to improve your online security.

The key behaviours to help you improve your online security are:

Install the latest software and app updates

• They contain vital security updates which help protect your device from viruses and hackers
• Security updates are designed to fix weaknesses in software and apps which could be used by hackers to attack your device. Installing them as soon as possible helps to keep your device secure
• You can choose to install updates at night when you are asleep and your device is plugged in or set your mobile or tablet to automatically update your apps when you are connected to Wi-Fi and an update is available
• You can also set laptops and desktops to automatically install software updates when an update is available

Use a strong, separate password for your email account (you can use three random words or numbers to create a strong password).

• Hackers can use your email to access many of your personal accounts, by asking for you password to be reset, and find out personal information, such as your bank details, address or date of birth, leaving you vulnerable to identity theft or fraud
• Having strong, separate passwords for your most important accounts means that if hackers steal your password for one of your less important accounts, they can’t use it to access your most important ones
• Make sure your password is easy for you to remember, but not easy for others to guess e.g. Pa55word may follow the rules of using letters and symbols but is well known amongst hackers as a common password
• Don’t use words which would be easy to discover from your social media accounts, such as your child’s name or favourite sports team

Other behaviours which can help keep you secure online include:

Secure your tablet or smartphone with a screen lock

• Give your device an extra layer of security by setting it to lock when you aren’t using it
• Screen locks provide an extra layer of security to your device, as each time you want to unlock it or turn it on, you will need to enter a PIN, pattern, password or fingerprint
• This means if someone gets hold of your device they can’t access the data on your device without entering your password, pattern, PIN or fingerprint

Always back-up your most important data

• Safeguard your most important data such as your photos and key documents by backing them up to an external hard drive or a cloud-based storage system
• If your device is infected by a virus or accessed by a hacker, your data may be damaged or deleted, which means you won’t be able to access it. Backing up your data means you have another copy of it, which you can access

Final tips:

• Remember that spammers could also gain access to a friend’s account, so if you get an uncharacteristic email containing a link from a friend, do not click on it but find another way of contacting them to check that the message is genuine.
• Leave a website if you feel suspicious – if the site doesn’t look or ‘feel’ right, if there is text that doesn’t appear to have any purpose or doesn’t tie in with the rest of the site, or if you feel uneasy for any reason.
• Regularly check your social media privacy settings to control exactly what you’re sharing with whom.
• If you’re going away on holiday, don’t advertise it on social media!
• If you use a wireless network at home, password-protect it.

These simple steps can go a long way to helping you to stay secure online. For more information visit https://www.cyberaware.gov.uk

Click here for BBC website