Published: 9 November, 2012
by SIMON WROE
PARKING chiefs have fallen foul of a suspected cyber scam after thousands of virus-infected emails were sent out to residents in the council’s name.
City Hall phone lines were flooded with more than 800 complaints on Wednesday.
The “phishing” scam is believed to contain a virus that embeds itself in a computer’s hard-drive and steals personal information.
The email is designed to look like a Westminster City Council parking receipt and claims to be from “PayByPhone”. The firm has a £2million-a-year contract with the council to provide their parking payment services.
Warnings have gone up on the council website telling people to delete the email and run their anti-virus software.
Peter Brooker, head of corporate affairs at PayByPhone, said the emails did not come from his company or the council and he was “taking steps to investigate the source”.
The attack will cause fresh embarrassment to the council’s parking department, which earlier this year was forced to scrap plans for a “nightlife tax” – where motorists would be charged £4.80 an hour to park in the West End on evenings and Sunday afternoons after numerous complaints.
It also comes just a week after Westminster launched its “Fair Parking Blueprint” ensuring that parking in central London is “fair, easy and safe”.
Barrie Segal, the Westminster-based founder of the AppealNow.com website and the author of The Parking Tickets Awards, said the council’s response “woolly and unsatisfactory”. He added: “When you sub-contract out the enforcement you put yourself at one remove from all matters related to quality control, staff, everything. I don’t believe Westminster has done very well at supervising this contract that they put out.”
“Westminster have abrogated their responsibilities when issues relating to contractors have been brought up.
“I don’t think they exercise nearly enough control. This is the problem, they stand back and say, ‘It’s not our problem’, well it is their problem.”
PayByPhone said many of the people who had received the email were not account-holders with their company.
Mr Brooker added: “We are confident that our registered users’ data has not been compromised. PayByPhone upholds strict security standards, ensuring that all data is securely held in line with Payment Card Industry, Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) standards.
“While PayByPhone is not at fault, we are very sorry for the inconvenience that this scam has caused.”
City council service development manager Kieran Fitsall added: “We received a very high volume of calls in a very short time concerning a spam email that was sent by an unauthorised third party pretending to be our contractor PayByPhone.
“No payment should be taken but if you have any concerns please contact your card provider or bank.”