It’s no longer a case of deleting spam emails that ask you to share your bank details with a mystery person on the internet who has just come into a large amount of money and wants to transfer you, a total stranger, a cool 25 million.

Nowadays, fraudsters pose as trustworthy institutions like the Post Office and HMRC to get their hands on our money, and are even able to fake the legitimate phone numbers of these companies and high street banks to help sell their con.

Lockdown has only made people more susceptible, with criminals using the Covid-19 pandemic to target victims online, through impersonation scams, romance fraud and investment scams.

According to the UK Finance Authority, impersonation scam cases, in which criminals impersonate trusted organisations to trick victims into handing over their money, almost doubled in the last year.

And Action Fraud – the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime – has reported that over £34.5m had been stolen since 1 March 2020.

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