To think this isn't legit?

[verynaiceham]

Just had this through as a text with a link to this??

Delete it. The link isn't actually to GovUK, look at the end two parts.

Yeps it's a scam

There'll be a help line number on the genuine website, ring it and ask.

Scam. Block and ignore.

Scam www.gov.uk/government/news/scam-warning-for-dvla-customers

They never text you / it's a scsm

I had a funny feeling it wasn’t legit. What about the poor people who fall for it and go on to enter their bank details? Is there a way I can report it?

I think it's the remit of Action Fraud: www.actionfraud.police.uk

I had a phone call yesterday from 'HMRC' saying they were going to sue me! Because of course HMRC are going to use a recorded lady to tell me that, not write as they always say they will!!

Is it time for a lesson in how websites addresses work?

What a silly question, it's ALWAYS time for a lesson in how web addresses work :o

When looking at a web address, they look like this:
SOME STUFF / OPTIONAL STUFF

Currently we are on:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3053650-to-think-this-isn-t-legit

SOME STUFF = "mumsnet.com" - tells you which website you are on

OPTIONAL STUFF = "/Talk/amibeing_unreasonable/3053650-to-think-this-isn-t-legit" - tells you what page within that website to go to

When figuring out whether a website is legit, you want to look at the bit between the and the next /

mumsnet.com

This is an easy one.
Look at the far right and you'll see a suffix - it should be one that you recognise. .com or .org or .co.uk or .fr for a French website.

Continue FROM THE RIGHT and you'll find the word or words that are the domain name. Here it's "mumsnet". Anything ending in mumsnet.com belongs to mumsnet.com.

Continue from the right and look for things that are separated by dots and you might find sub-domains.
SOMETHING.SOMETHINGELSE.legitsite.com is a subdomain of legitsite.com - it is "safe".
en.wikipedia.org is a subdomain of wikipedia.org - it does belong to Wikipedia and it's where the English-language stuff lives.
analytics.twitter.com is a subdomain of twitter.com and it's where you can see stats about your followers.

If the words are not separated by dots, we are not looking at subdomains.
The main domain is always the one on the far right next to the suffix.
(I'm making these up here...)
quiz.mumsnet.com would be a subdomain of mumsnet.com and belong to the same people who run mumsnet.com
quiz-mumsnet.com would be a whole domain in itself and probably belong to other (dodgy) people
mumsnet.quiz.com would be a subdomain of quiz.com and belong to the same people who run quiz.com

I got that text too! Apparently I was due a refund of £68.07p

Trills that was very educational, thank you! I never knew the difference between . and - in the addresses 😊

Glad you liked it.

I think "how to recognise the important bit of a web address" is a useful skill! :)

Trills thank you for that post, really interesting!

OP - hope you don't mind but we've been alerted to the fact that your mobile number was appearing in the shot of your text message so we've zapped that picture for you - figured you probably had better things to do with your weekend than potentially answer the phone to a load of prank callers.

@IonaMumsnet The number shown was the where the text came from but no problem removing it