unfortunately the government has not moved with the times and has allowed our personal data/information to be a commodity that can be bought and sold by anyone.

Before the arrival of the internet, the only way companies obtained our personal information is from the public register which the council gave out to library's on microfiche.

Now with the arrival of the internet, the only way for the huge majority of companies to survive is to buy and sell customers data. You want to do online shopping, you have to sign up with credit card details and phone number. You want to chat to friends online, you have to sign up with email. Every site is doing it, if you want something, you have to give up your personal information, sites like amazon, asda, tesco, facebook, all the online banks, even this over 50's site, they all collect your personal data and they sell it to a 3rd party. All websites do it. Any that say they don't are lying.

This is why our personal data needs to be reclassified as 'personal property' basically belonging to us, the people. Having to 'opt in' or 'opt out' is just a placebo in an attempt to keep people happy. Having your own personal information classified as your own property would mean any company who trades in your information could be taken to court, regardless of the opt in/opt out status because your information would be yours. As it stands at the moment, your own personal information does not belong to your, your name, your home address, your telephone number, your email address, your bank details, they all belong to somebody else and as such they can sell it as and when they please, which is what they currently do, hence why you keep getting all the scams.

To have heard that would have been a setback for the scammers, especially if they first thought they were speaking to an elderly gentleman!

How on earth did they get access to his computer though? That would be my first thought, I would have to find out and prevent it happening again.

1) – Yes, easily done and something I avoid like the plague.

2) – I use Apple Macs but checked out the same facility as on PCs running Widows 10 and all are turned off. By what I found about the Sharing facility a password is required anyway, so another safeguard.

Passwords can be subject to been sold on, or stolen.

Obviously, if they are stolen, there can be a problem in the future when the baddie tries it out with the email log on.

It's more common than many think.

It can be checked out by going to this site:-

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Well known in the techie world. You just type in some , or each of your email addresses, and the package tells you if you have been "pawnd" (which means breached and possibly sold on.

If one of mine is found to have been pawnd I give it a new password and, often, get a new email address.

The baddies may not use your info straight away. They wait a while until you forget!

It's possible that this one done in the example which you mentioned.

I had a call 'from Amazon' earlier to say my subscription to Prime was due to run out and by clicking on a number I could cancel or renew it.

I don't subscribe to Amazon Prime but guess if I had selected 'renew' the scammers would have taken my card details

I hadn't heard of this scam Meg until I received a call from them this afternoon! I don't subscribe to Amazon Prime either!

There was an elderly chap in our local paper tonight who got scammed.

Apparently he was just going to take his dog out for a walk when he got a phone call saying his Amazon account was being accessed by someone in America!
They kept him talking for nearly 2 & half hours!!

They told him there seemed to be several different people involved and they were going to put him through to one of their superiors.
The old fella said they sounded very professional and when they began talking about his Amazon account and his banking, they got him hooked.

They said they would pay some money back into his account but he had to go to his branch of Nationwide and take money out and transfer it to TSB for safety first. They provided him with a TSB account number and sort code.

In the meantime they got access to his account, took over his computer remotely and nicked £3,850!

Fortunately, Nationwide saved his bacon and sussed the scam straightaway. They seemed fully aware of this present Amazon scam that's doing the rounds.

The article said at the finish - "If you are targeted by a scam call, report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040.