Helpful advice
Flood Warning System explained
By Roger Baker
The North Yorkshire Division of the Environment Agency has installed a new flood warning operation in their offices in York which is operational 24/7. In order to demonstrate and communicate the facility, representatives of all flood risk areas were invited to a seminar on 7 July 2018. In order to provide a localised communication link within the village Rodney Wilson, Ken Barker and I have agreed to become flood wardens, consequently we attended the seminar
Basically all the Environment Agency personnel leaders involved in the system presented their part in the operation and the seminar was concluded with a tour of the facility. It was emphasised that some areas
rely heavily on forecast information such as Tadcaster which is quite different to Bishop Monkton. However as more accurate equipment is introduced we recognise the benefit of maintaining a presence in the system.
In the immediate term communication from the system is communicated to Flood Wardens however if individual persons wish to receive Flood Warnings, the office in York will add the persons to the contact list. The numbers to ring are as follows
Customer Service Line : 03708 506 506
Incident Hot Line: 0800 807060
Floodline: 03459 881188
The Environment Agency Contact Person is Lisa Gifford.
Flood Risk Manager is Jenny Baker( no relation).
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How to avoid being scammed
By Martin Minett
The level of e-mail scamming continues to be a big problem, as a number of readers have recently found.
One important way in which you can help to make it more difficult for scammers to scoop up blocks of e-mail addresses is by using BCC (Blind) rather than CCC when circulating to a number of recipients (unless it's important that those receiving know who else has received). All e-mail systems have a BCC option, normally along side the CCC. The same applies if you are forwarding an e-mail (and also blank out any email addresses already contained).
The scammers scan multitudes of e-mails, seeking addresses but if Blind is used then they normally cannot find them.They also scan websites for email addresses (called scraping) so we are removing many from this website, bar those needed for club/society contacting.
For a long time they have also hacked personal contact lists / address books that are stored by your email provider in their server (computer) and while the providers now take additional safety measures, it's important that you take care with your passwords.
Also, be vigilant when receiving an e-mail, if you are suspicious then don't open it, does the sending e-mail name look familiar or sensible and if there are links inside or downloads then do not action them. Play safe and delete it, for if genuine and important, then the sender will probably contact you again in some other way.
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