Are you scam savvy? Share your experiences - £200 voucher to be won.

[EllieSmumsnet]

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With the cost of living increasing, it has never been more important to protect yourself from fraud and scams.

Criminals are taking advantage of the current challenges by targeting people with fake investment opportunities, too good to be true deals, loans that don’t exist and by impersonating trusted organisations.

What frauds or scams have you encountered recently? What gave the game away? And what steps do you take to protect your personal and financial information?

• Post your experiences in the thread below to be entered into a prize draw.
• One lucky winner will win a £200 voucher for a store of their choice.

If you’ve fallen for a scam and are happy to share your experience, UK Finance wants to hear from you so you can help others avoid it: [email protected]

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

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It's always those phone calls saying they are your broadband provider. I ask them what my name is and if they can tell me my account number and then they usually hang up. If the person doesn't know who they are calling and who my provider actually is (like an account number!) it's a pretty big giveaway!

I had a very convincing one that appeared to be from Amazon Prime recently- saying I qualified for a £15 voucher to be redeemed against any film/s.

The dodgy return email address was the giveaway, but the appearance, language, font, everything else seemed completely real. Even the smallish amount I "won" seemed realistic. I didn't click on the link but I imagine it was a phishing attempt of some kind.

Amazon has only 2 or 3 official email addresses they use to contact customers, it's always best to check the return address when contacted out of the blue like that.

I never answer the phone unless the number is of someone I have saved (so they name comes up) or I'm expecting a call. If it's real/important they will leave a message/find another way to contact me.

I always hover over who an email claims to be from to get it to show the email address before I even open an email. I get so many which say "Amazon", but when you hover over them the email address is just a bunch of letters and numbers.

If there's ever anything which claims to be from something like a bank but seems off, I always try to find whatever it's telling me to do directly through the bank rather than clicking on links.

I have just this week had the hello mum text scam about my child losing their phone. The thing is they definitely could do that and were away from home when I got the message. Giveaway was that I had heard of the scam and also it wasn’t realistic, would have had some typos and a bit more real detail

I’ve had the Royal Mail text a few times, also texts purportedly from Amazon or Apple Pay. All from random mobile numbers so not convincing if you stop and look properly.

I got a Facebook message recently claiming to be from posh ready meal company ‘Charlie Bingham’ saying I had won a prize in their competition - excitedly I clicked the link but started to get suspicious when they asked me for my bank details to send me my prize! It was a very sneaky convincing scam as they had all the correct logos etc and I’m a small time comper so I actually HAD entered a Charlie Bighams competition a few days prior. Luckily I smelt a rat though!

I had a good one recently, claiming to have my latest mobile and broadband bill attached. However the email address was incorrect- companynanebilling.com instead of company name.com/billing and the attached file was not a pdf

I no longer get car crash calls since I started engaging them in conversation. It was worrying how the number of these calls increased when I had been involved in a crash, the data was obviously sold on.

Had quite a long period of time where someone claiming to be from Virgin Media would call about our "slow broadband". Sometimes I'd string them along for a bit, sometimes I'd just hang up.
On one occasion I let the man go through his opening shpiel and then I outright asked him if this was just a way of getting remote access to my computer. He actually replied "How did you know??"
Our landline handset died last month. Haven't bothered replacing it, so no more fake calls!
I've had TrueCaller on my mobile for a while. Ironically, so many people have reported the actual Virgin Media number that TrueCaller would automatically block them!

Not a scam as such as it's not illegal BUT it still cost £79!
My husband hadn't updated the address on his driving licence so did it online and thought he was on the DVLA website. I'd just updated mine so knew it didn't cost anything and was surprised to see £79 notification from the Credit Card.
Phoned Credit Card immediately to cancel transaction but they weren't able to stop it as husband was paying for a service - where this company contacts DVLA on your behalf.
My husband is an intelligent man yet just paid it without thinking!

I had this one too. Luckily it was only £15

I thought I was being scammed by someone claiming to be from my bank responded to the text then panicked. The next day I was able to check with my bank and it had been them mystery solved panic over but it made me very worried initially.
I get too many texts a few have been genuine but I never trust them and always phone direct to check.

We got rid of the landline.
That has stopped the majority of scam calls.

I get the occasional phone call or text to my mobile, but it's a rarity. I'm very cautious if I don't already have the number stored in my phone.

We need a landline, so we got one with 'tru call'. Anyone not on your caller directory has to press a number and announce themselves - the phone rings and plays the announcement and you can accept or reject the call without having to speak to the caller. As most scam/marketing calls are on auto-diallers, they don't get through at all. Any genuine callers will announce themselves.

I almost fell for a scam where the person had set up an email in the name of my friend and sent me an email pretending to be them asking me for a favour. I replied and asked what favour? And they wanted me to buy £200 worth of vouchers for their nieces birthday. I said no but they tried again. They were very convincing. It was the large amount that stopped me, if it had been £20/£30 I may have done it.

Just to add, you can disable this at any time to let all calls through with the press of a couple of buttons if you are expecting an important call but don't know the number.

Just had the hi mum dropped my phone down the loo and messaging from friend's phone one earlier today - Mum led them a merry dance replying with lots of advice about how to dry it out with rice / tissues / hairdryer and various other timewasting suggestions, and then blocked, deleted and rang me to tell me 😂 I'd had a tough day so it gave me a giggle!

I've had it before but don't have any children which was a bit of a giveaway - and have a small business so get endless delivery ones which are almost always scams - I know what I'm expecting and who to call if it doesn't turn up so they don't work, but some of them are very realistic!

I don't usually fall for scams - but felt very silly at clicking through on a text very soon after hermes chnaged its name to evri. It came from a legit looking website name rather than the weird ones that are scammy but it was only when it asked for my date of birth to rearrange a parcel delivery that I started to think it was a scam - Why would they need my date of birth for that! So I stopped there but felt conned that I had even clicked through to it.

I am a very cynical person and this helps a lot!
If anyone I know gets a suspicious message they will always ask me what I think now as my friend got a text about applying for her energy payment and didn’t believe me when I said it was a scam - unfortunately she did get scammed 🙁
I tell everyone to Google any text, email they get as any results will show it’s a scam if it is.

Messages claiming to be from HMRC when they don’t contact you that way. All the usual ones via phone to tell me there is a problem with my computer/broadband etc, from a provider I’m not with. And the emails with poor spelling and grammar.

I have had several Scam emails, tax office, amazon prime, in the early days PayPal when i ALMOST fell for it - I had my debit card out ready to update - then spider senses kicked in.
I always check who the email is REALLY from by clicking on the drop down for the sender, and report.

I regularly get scam calls from Amazon - saying someone has bought an Iphone - click one to speak to an advisor - If I am busy I hang up - if not I press one and have a great laugh at the expense of the operator, pretending to sound worried - crying hysterically - pretending to go to the door as a neighbour is there - until they hang up

I get a lot of messages supposedly from HMRC. They are very realistic. I always click on the email address and this is usually a dead giveaway they are a scam.

I tutor people online and this means I have to share my details with a lot of strangers from around the world. I have had people try to pose a good friends and cultivate a friendship, even over months, and then suddenly make a request for me to be involved in money transfers and similar.

I am careful now not to reveal my true full name and to not disclose my email account that is my real name; I have a separate, dedicated email address to give out and the same goes for shared documents, etc. I also do not give out my social media accounts and use the highest privacy settings.

It's important to realise that people being friendly online may have motives that aren't genuine, even when you have met them in a work situation or they have a respectable job.

Not all scams are as obvious as spam emails and random phone calls, some are more sophisticated and come from people you know personally.

Another one I've experienced is the courier scam. We were selling an old musical instrument on Gumtree - nothing rare or valuable, but heavy and bulky. Listed as cash on collection only. Within half an hour of listing it, we had three messages from people proposing to have it couriered to various overseas locations.

The cost of couriering it would have been more than the item was worth - clearly a scam. I believe what happens if you fall for it is that they send you money to pay the courier; you pay the courier and then it turns out the money you've received is fraudulent so it gets claimed back, leaving you out of pocket.

My rule with selling things is that the moment any form of complexity appears, or a sob story (one of the requests we got had a long spiel about someone who was housebound) it's a sign of a scam.

I get lots of scam texts about parcels, unpaid delivery feeds etc luckily I know better than to click on them. My in laws have almost fallen for scams a few times, they can be hard to spot when you aren't used to using technology