Scam alert service

Paul –

More than £355m lost to bank transfer scams in the first half of 2021

Of the £355.3m lost to bank transfer scams in the first half of the year, just £121.7m was reimbursed to victims – just 42.4% of the overall losses. Not only is more money being lost, but less money is being repaid to fraud victims.

UK Finance says fraud is ‘now at a level where it poses a national security threat’, and is calling on the government for coordinated action, and to ensure that all economic crime is brought within the scope of the Online Safety Bill.

We look at the scale of the problem and what safeguards you have to stop you from falling victim to scammers.

Fraud protections in place

Tackling the ongoing ‘scamdemic’

Text scams are at their highest rate on record and over a 90-day period from May to July 2021, 53% of texts reported to the 7726 service – a free text service that enables you to report spam texts – were fake parcel delivery messages and 37% impersonated banks.

In this podcast episode, we hear from Adam French, our senior consumer rights editor, about the dirty tactics fraudsters are using to dupe us out of our data and money. We’re joined by HMRC to hear how it’s fighting back, and you can find out why we’re asking businesses to change their behaviour.

For your listening convenience we’ve linked to this episode via Acast, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify. It’s also available on the Which? website, simply click here then scroll down.

Listen on Acast

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Google Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

There’s now a much easier way to make us aware of scams directly with our scam sharer tool. Tell us your experiences of phishing emails, fake texts, cold calls and other types of fraud.

Stay safe,

Which? scam alert team