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

[EllieSmumsnet]

Created for UK Finance

This Activity is Now Closed.

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

Insight T&Cs apply

There was a really good programme about this on R4 recently. They had the police on saying their simple message was “Take 5, Tell 2”.

As the scammers create urgency which stops scepticism living in the idea is to take 5 minutes before acting on any unsolicited communication and tell 2 people, which will enable vulnerable people to get others’ advice/views.

Kicking in. Not living in. Autocorrect again!

Oh dear, I have an opposite experience. I have deleted / ignored texts or phone calls that were 100% legit for me, but its so drummed into me that they might be scams, I don't engage if I don't know for sure it's legit.

This ignore/delete policy has only caused minor problems so far. But it's part of a picture where ramping up counter-fraud measures is making many things harder. For instance, Work is moving to MFA to get on our computers: every time I go for a wee or a cuppa, when I come back, have to hold my phone up to window (I work in a concrete bunker with bad reception) to get a text to login. Oh joy. How much time will that waste.

In meantime we get lectures about no personal email use to read/send on work documents. So of course that means I can't see work emails on phone, work sure isn't going to supply me with a work phone & I don't want to carry multiple phones, anyway. It's great to be uncontactable when you're on way to /from work meetings in new places...

I've had the WhatsApp scam a couple of times - my son's 'new' phone and him needing money - thing is he was on holiday at the time so very believable - they are preying on a parents instincts to protect.
I phoned him- just to be clear he was ok - he was, so I deleted the message

I had a letter from my energy provider, just before Christmas last year (at the same time bulb etc were going bust. They wanted a payment of £188 - I NEARLY went on line paying the amount to the sort code and bank account stated.

My 'spidey senses' tingled to I googled the letter and provider - only to find many questions had been raised about the same letter - in the bin it went - but I wonder how many people paid - it was a very authentic looking letter, and just before Christmas people are too busy to check these things

Anyone remember the thread on one here recently .... one of our Mumsnetters husbands had 'invested' a substantial amount on a get rich quick scam.

I've not had anything quite so life changing, but have had the amazon recorded messages, the PayPal emails - which look entirely genuine - it's really hard to tell the genuine ones from the fake.

I know banks will never email you, and I don't get many Phishing emails from banks anymore - it's a world where it's hard to trust anything ....

I've had my debit card cloned when I used a cash machine - it was only when my bank stopped some high value purchases that I was notified - to an absolute AGE to sort out - as many lower value purchases had been made.

I got a text from what looked entirely like my bank, in the same chain of messages as all previous, legitimate, texts from my bank. This latest text invited me to click on a link to review an updated account document.

I had never been given a link in a text from my bank before, so was immediately wary. That being so, I pasted the wording from the text into Google to see what would come up, and particularly to see if it yielded a result on my bank's website.

Lo and behold it did have a result on my bank's website, but warning me that this was a Smishing scam and that I should delete the message! A lucky escape, and has taught me to always double check messages before clicking on any links.

Many phone calls purporting to be from hmrc with a warrant out for my arrest.... I don't have WhatsApp just iMessage so haven't seen the 'I've lost my phone' message. Having watched a bit of the programme on bbc though I can see how easy it is for some to be scammed by them

@J0CASTA I've had something similar from Barclays about a fraudulent transaction, it was very credible but the woman mispronounced my name and tried to talk me through security as soon as I said I would call Barclays myself, the line dropped.

I often get emails (always with attachments) using the name of a remote acquaintance who I lost touch with long ago.

When I hover over the sender, a wide range of different email addresses comes up - never from the UK.

I block and delete every time, yet they keep coming. It's scary how plausible they look and how easily they can be inadvertently opened

I regularly get scam texts claiming to be the government r.e cost of living payments, or Royal Mail claiming I have a parcel etc.

generally I will always Google something and it generally throws up quite quickly that it is a scam.

Generally anything wanting you to click a link I will Google and check

Every time I advertise something over about £100 pounds on Gumtree I get several scam messages from people wanting to buy it. I don’t even respond now. I just block them.

Dh almost fell for a scam when selling a car. He had given the scammer his phone number and they were texting back and forward about it. The scammer wanted dh to book and pay for the transportation up front then he would get cash when they collected the car. Thankfully, he thought something didn’t sound right and took advice. However he has now lost trust in any selling site.

I regularly get the “Hi Mum this is my new number” type messages. My DCs have a “password question” that I can ask at any time. If you can’t answer the question then you aren’t my child!

My kids know to ask a random question , like the name of the next door neighbour’s dog or their maths teacher.

I think one of the big giveaways with scammers us that they often tend to be generic: "this is your broadband provider", "this is your insurance company".

That and sticking "yes" onto the end if a question. "You've been in an accident in the past, yes?"

We buy substantially more online than we ever used too, I nearly fell for a scan where I get a text from a delivery company asking me to re-schedule a delivery.
I lose track of who is delivering what, (if I pay any attention at all) so in my haste I clicked on the link. Quickly realised when they started asking for money.
Fir whatever reason I’m more suspicious of emails then I am texts, not anymore!

I've had several recently.

We had a man knock on our door - the police were actually at our house for another purpose, but we were all upstairs in the loft. The police were actually behind me when I opened the door - the man started to ask to come inside and was asking to use a phone, he then changed to asking for water when he realised the police were standing behind me. Turns out the scam is he comes in to use the phone and his friends come in a burgle your house. Thankfully, we don't have a landline and had the police not been there, and had we not been expecting someone else to arrive, we wouldn't have opened the door. The police however explained that it was a well-known issue in the area and got a few cars out to arrest them.

I often get links asking me to enter personal details in messages, usually as though they are coming from a medical facility - the reality is they just want personal information to go and access some other account.

The parcel one mentioned is quite common too - I haven't had it apart from Royal Mail - or someone pretending to be from Royal Mail and saying I owed a custom charge for a package sent from abroad. I went to pay it and whilst I did have a package, there was no custom charge to be paid - I would also recommend going to the delivery office if this occurs. Possibly an inside job?

I have had several texts from people claiming to be my child and having a new phone. My children are young so clearly a scam but worry something like this would get my parents. I also get tax refund messages and not paid postage correctly messages. It’s a worrying time that there’s so many scams out there.

I thought I was scam savvy but more and more texts come through and I worry I may be caught out, especially if I’m already tired or overloaded and the run up to Christmas makes it worse. I never, ever follow any links and tend to google ……scam if I’m even slightly suspicious!

An elderly neighbour was getting scam calls from his "bank" saying that there was fraudulent activity on his account. He gave them his card details so that they could check. He came and told me straight away so I rang his bank and told them to freeze his account while he went there to sort ot out.
The fraudster rang him back and I told him he'd gone to his bank to sort it himself and told him to fuck off as he was a scammer. He rang back and told me to go and fucked myself as I was just a filthy whore.

My parents got a phone call claiming to be from the NHS and a covid helpline. They had both recently recovered from covid and so were even more vulnerable. Luckily I was visiting them and intercepted the call whilst my father was talking to the call handler. He was about to ask for personal information and I quickly took over to the call.

It's amazing how quickly these calls can suck people in and almost force the vulnerable person on the other end give up their personal info.

Imagine if the winner of this competition ignores the email because they think it’s a scam 😬

There are lots of courier scams around that are quite convincing. Most scams are obvious though, they rely on people clicking without reading it properly. Its interesting that Visa have just upped the security on their cards so now even small online transactions need extra verification by text, a lot of people are obviously getting scammed.

I get several texts every week from courier companies advising I have missed a delivery and that I need to follow a link to pay a small fee for delivery. Most of the time Im not actually waiting on a parcel so I can tell its a scam. I do worry about elderly relatives falling for this type of thing though. There's awareness of course but its mainly on social media. More should be done to go after these fraudsters imo - bigger punishments handed out