Morrisons voucher scam: fake 'chance to win £500' offer doing the rounds

The 'Morrisons' voucher scam email tries to grab your personal details by tricking you into filling out a fake survey.

Watch out for a scam email that says you have the chance to win a £500 Morrisons voucher.

The fake email appears to be from Morrisons and offers you a Morrisons gift card if you fill out a one-minute survey.

You are told you are one of only a select group of 10 participants – making it seem like you're in with a decent shout of bagging the £500 voucher.

But it is all a scam. Morrisons has nothing to do with the emails and, if you fill out the survey, all you’ll be doing is handing your personal details over to criminals.

UPDATE: since publishing this we have received a new version of the scam. Scroll down to see screengrabs of the existing and updated ones.

Read more: common supermarket scams we have spotted

Clever criminals

This type of email survey scam is particularly crafty as we are all so used to getting genuine emails from companies we shop with asking us to review items or complete a survey about our shopping experience.

“Legitimate companies like online surveys because they are quick, easy to put together and cheap to do,” a spokesperson for Action Fraud told Watchdog.

“It’s not unusual to get a survey request in your email inbox from a company that you’ve recently bought something from or signed up to.

“Fraudsters also love online surveys because it’s easy to trick victims into revealing personal information such as banking details or passwords in the belief they are going to get something in return.

"They then use this to steal victim’s money or identity, or to sell this information to other fraudsters.”

Below is a screengrab of the scam in question. You can view a larger version simply by clicking on it.

Key signs of a scam email

• The sender’s email address doesn’t match with the real organisation's web address.
• You aren’t addressed by your proper name. Instead, there is a generic greeting such as ‘dear customer’.
• There is pressure to act quickly – either you need to quickly claim a prize or if you don’t act your account will be closed
• You need to click on a link in order to act
• You are asked for personal information such as a username, password or your bank details
• Mistakes – scam emails often contain spelling and grammatical errors.

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As mentioned earlier, an updated version of the scam is currently doing the rounds.

This one works on the same principle – getting you to hand over personal info in the hopes of bagging a voucher – but here they try to work the angle of you being specially selected.

The poor spelling and grammar are clear signs it's fake. Take a look a the screengrab below. The blanked out red bits are where it includes the first part of your email address. So if you used your first name in your address this might seem more convincing. 

Like the first version, this should be deleted immediately. 

What to do if you get a suspicious email

1. Do not click on any links in the email.

2. Do not reply to the email, or in any way contact the sender.

3. If you have already clicked on a link within the email do not enter any information on the website that it takes you to.

4. Don’t open any attachments that come with the email.

5. Report the email to the police by forwarding the email to NFIBPhishing@city-of-london.pnn.police.uk.

6. If you think you might have given away information that could affect the security of your bank accounts contact your bank immediately.

7. If you have been a victim of an email scam report it to Action Fraud.