With the warm months having arrived, scammers have taken to using the holidays to take advantage of their victims. This is on top of their tactics regarding text messages and scam calls where they pretend to be from trusted sources. Thankfully, mandatory reimbursements are reducing the harm from these scams.
Holiday scams
Restless has noted that the spring and early summer months tend to be a peak time for holiday scams, when people book holidays that don’t exist or are not what was advertised.
It comes as no surprise then that Which? is warning people of new holiday scams, which are doing the rounds at the moment: “A third of UK adults report an increase in fraudulent travel content on social media in the last year, is according to a survey by [the pollsters] Opinium.”
The survey also found that, because of scams, as many as 70% of adults in the UK are dubious of any promotional emails related to holidays. Which? recommends that people “book through official, trusted channels” and that any tempting offer they find should be thoroughly researched beforehand.
For more information on spotting and avoiding these scams please see here.
Spotting text message scams
Another major source of fraud is what is known as smishing. This is a type of ‘phishing fraud’, when fake or deceptive text messages are sent by criminals to try and trick people into clicking on malicious links. The aim of these texts is to encourage the receiver to click on links that go to fraudulent websites that can steal personal information or money.
Which? is warning people to look out for scam messages claiming to be from couriers. Some will say that you need to pay an additional charge that the delivery is delayed, or that you’ve missed a delivery and tell you to follow a tracking link.
Some of the companies the scammers claim to be from include, Royal Mail, Yodel, Evri, DPD, DHL and UPS.
You should always be suspicious of links in text messages, avoid clicking on them, and not give away money or important personal data.
For more information please see here .
Scam calls: the latest in circulation and how to stop them
Scam calls are defined as unsolicited phone calls that “claim to be from someone or a company they’re not.”
Which? has recorded that as many as 75% of British people have received a scam call in the last year and that “three in 10 were left feeling unsafe because of scam calls and messages.”
They are also reported to be getting increasingly sophisticated. In a cold call uncovered by National Trading Standards earlier this year, the scammers managed to clone voices using AI, which then led to fraudulent payments being set up. The scam was operated as a fraud claiming to be a lifestyle survey, so that scammers could ask key questions.
For more information about how to spot these scams and avoid them please see here.
Latest scams
Which? publish details of some of the latest scams they come across.
Scam websites like these can be reported to the National Security Cybersecurity Centre, while emails can be reported by forwarding them to report at phishing.gov.uk.
O2 customers have been warned to watch out for scam calls and texts targeting them claiming that the SIM is inactive and will expire.
Another scam, related to the hot weather, is a fraudulent website impersonating retailers such as ALDI which is trying to sell air conditioning systems to the public.
Some scam texts claim to be from Evri, saying that a delivery couldn’t be completed due to incorrect address details this then leads to a link to a fake website which asks you to put in personal details.
For more information on all these scams and more, please see here. And there is also a scam sharer tool you can use to help others to avoid being victims, which you can find here.
Reducing fraud by scam refunds
Consultants Frontier Economics has found that mandatory reimbursements since October 2024 have cut fraud losses by £73 million a year, and that the number of APP scams has gone down by nearly 35,000 a year, while more victims are getting their money back.
To learn more about these new rules, please see here.
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