Share your thoughts and experiences of financial fraud and/or scams with Take Five to Stop Fraud - £300 voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

Never click on a link unless you are sure it is from a genuine contact

When you get a "dodgy" looking email that just might be real, hover your mouse over the email address and it will show the real one (usually confirms that it is dodgy - lots of random letters and numbers)

If I use Paypal for a transaction, either moble or online, I always immediately open the Paypal site in a new window, check that the transaction is as instructed and then LOG OUT. I don't know how long Paypal takes to log you out after yo've used it, but I prefer to do it myself, to be certain as it appears to keep you logged in post transaction, which doesn't seem like a great idea to me!

If anyone is offering you a refund or asking you to click a link in an email regarding a recent Paypal or iTunes purchase it is probably a scam.
When buying online scammers often price fake goods at a "realistic bargain price" which leads people to believe they are the genuine article. I know someone who fell prey to this at Christmas with an expensive item which then turned out to be fake. Luckily they had paid by credit card which meant that they had recourse under Section 75, so it is always worth paying by credit card online for expensive items, even if there is a small fee. Also google the website for information and reviews and check whether they have an actual postal address - scam sites often don't.

Good tips posted.

Get call minder added to your phone. I usually do not answer any number I do not know, especially international calls. If it is important they will leave a message.

Be aware of a recent phone scam I received when I did answer an unknown call. The caller, a quite obviously not very good English speaker, deemed to relate to me the problem of nuisance calls these days (oh the irony!) and that the telephone company can now stop them so if I press a certain number .... Oh, yes I did put the phone down at this point.

Beware...do not press any number etc that they ask you to.

If I’ve opened an email which I then suspect is dodgy, I always forward it to Action Fraud @
[email protected]
This enables them to investigate the origins of various scams, try to close the fake websites & if possible, prosecute the scammers. If we all did this, Action Fraud would have a much better picture of the scale of these frauds.
My elderly neighbour was caught by a phone scammer. He was called by a person pretending to be from BT. He had actually been experiencing broadband problems so was caught unawares by the scam. They got him to allow them computer access, and it was only when he asked his wife to fetch the credit card to pay the £500 bill for “fixing” the “errors” that she became suspicious and made him hang up. In retaliation, they wiped his computer clean. None of his data could be recovered, including his photos etc. A horrible lesson to learn.

I was one of many people caught up in a scam a couple of years back. A company was set up by a serial fraudster who constantly set companies up specifically to defraud people and then shut them down and start another. He had been doing this for many years, was well known to police forces around the country and had indeed spent time in jail too.
On this occasion he set up a company with a new hotel that people could book into and as the first guests it would be at a reduced rate. Loads of people booked including myself. There was an online booking system, a web site, twitter and Facebook accounts.
Anyway, it was a scam and as my booking was on credit card I was refunded however some people had paid by bank transfer and never got their money back.
This man has since gone on to set up more bogus companies. Sometimes there is no way of knowing in advance that you are being scammed so if paying for a service use a card so at least you have protection.

My husband and I have had our bank account hacked into, once through PayPal. We haven't a clue how it happened and luckily my husband noticed it more or less straight away and our bank we marvellous at sorting it all out for us and refunding the money. It was very frightening though as we are careful not to click on links etc and are puzzled as to how it happened. We are extremely careful now and very rarely purchase things on line or pay bills etc. We no longer use Ebay either.

After allowing my nephew to use a debit card to buy on Microsoft live we had recurring payments taken out of our bank that weren't for him. Someone had hacked his account and was using our deetails. We did eventually get the money back but had to cancel the card and block Microsoft from our account. It took a lot of sorting and we are very wary of using cards for this type of payment. In the end I set up a separate paypal account that we could send money to without having to register a card to it so he could buy things without risking our details

I once got duped by a phishing email. Luckily, I didn't lose anything. I registered with CIFAS (2 years for £20) which puts extra checks in place if someone tries to get credit in your name.

People that phone up, use your first name and talk to you like you are best buddies. They often say something like 'you expressed an interest last year', or something along those lines to get around the fact they they should not be cold calling. Don't engage with any conversation, just hang up. Feels awkward at first, but trust me, its a scam and they are not calling for the the benefit of your health.

I find it really scary because their becoming more sophisticated.

Just the idea terrifies me! Knowing what can people do to a defenseless person. It is certainly not only the taking of the money but the fact that these people can track your whereabouts so easily and the police could not care less !
It is very scary indeed.

Make sure you logout, and have different passwords

I have never been caught in a scam so far. I am very careful and will not open emails or give details on the phone of any account details

I work in this area so am very familiar with it. There are basic steps as per a lot of comments already on here that can pretty much protect you against the vast majority of scams. I am seeing though a much more effective and convincing set of scams coming through recently which I can understand why people are getting hooked by them.

Never been a victim thank goodness but we do all the sensible things, don't use public wifi, no online banking, no clicking on unknown links and never calling back numbers or giving details to unknown on the phone

I am afraid I am very suspicious and tend not to believe anyone who phones or emails wanting to discuss money. I have had several people ring and ask about things to do with my computer. I often check the phone number on line to see what others have on say about it.

I've never fallen victim beyond a small transaction on a credit card but I am ridiculously wary. I follow most of the previous tips plus have a separate account for online shopping that only ever has a small amount of money in it and I transfer into if I want to buy something larger (via branch, I'm lucky to still have one!) Banks have been known to refuse to refund as it's "your fault", and you'll never get the money back from the scammers as they never seem to be caught.

One of the biggest frauds happening now ( details Action against Abuse of the Elderly) is a family member or friends getting access to an elderly relative's financial affairs and using their money as theirs. I think the police dealt with 100k cases in the last 18 months ( Tonight programme covered it 3 months ago) and that was the tip of the iceberg.

An old person becomes vulnerable when hospitalised or has a spell of ill health and needing care. Someone steps in to "help" sometimes without the wider family knowing that this "help" has also managed access to their bank. Some elderly have been made homeless when their home was sold without their knowledge.

Banks and Post Offices have tightened up things so a customer gets frequent statements and they ask for wider family to check up in cases where someone have taken over the role of "carer". PoA is going to be tightened up. There were too many loopholes including Social Services that allowed the elderly to become financially vulnerable to people so called helping them.

It happened to me 18 months ago. I had a spell of ill health and needed care for a while. A family member I never see, who lives 600 miles away contacted my Social Worker, claimed to be my "carer" and could she have PoA arranged over my affairs? My SW almost believed her, I got a solicitor, family member rang the Solicitor giving him instructions in my place. I got the police in to stop her. She had done exactly the same to someone else in the family and cleaned out their bank, pretending to their family she had a "Power of Attorney". Always check on those.

It was a great shock to the whole family, more so how easy it is to do. It is fraud. Once the money is in the bank they spend, on luxury holidays, property, cars. That family member lives 600 miles away from her victims and could still convince that she was legitimate.

Getting any money back is possible but at huge legal cost. It is best that *several" members of a family keep an eye on an elderly person's affairs including a solicitor and bank. The "carer" may become protective, refusing to show accounts, or become aggressive and threatening (abandoning the old person causing distress), they could be red alert signs.

It is so sad, we don't always have to look further than family when money goes missing.

One of the biggest frauds happening now ( details Action against Abuse of the Elderly) is a family member or friends getting access to an elderly relative's financial affairs and using their money as theirs. I think the police dealt with 100k cases in the last 18 months ( Tonight programme covered it 3 months ago) and that was the tip of the iceberg.

An old person becomes vulnerable when hospitalised or has a spell of ill health and needing care. Someone steps in to "help" sometimes without the wider family knowing that this "help" has also managed access to their bank. Some elderly have been made homeless when their home was sold without their knowledge.

Banks and Post Offices have tightened up things so a customer gets frequent statements and they ask for wider family to check up in cases where someone have taken over the role of "carer". PoA is going to be tightened up. There were too many loopholes including Social Services that allowed the elderly to become financially vulnerable to people so called helping them.

It happened to me 18 months ago. I had a spell of ill health and needed care for a while. A family member I never see, who lives 600 miles away contacted my Social Worker, claimed to be my "carer" and could she have PoA arranged over my affairs? My SW almost believed her, I got a solicitor, family member rang the Solicitor giving him instructions in my place. I got the police in to stop her. She had done exactly the same to someone else in the family and cleaned out their bank, pretending to their family she had a "Power of Attorney". Always check on those.

It was a great shock to the whole family, more so how easy it is to do. It is fraud. Once the money is in the bank they spend, on luxury holidays, property, cars. That family member lives 600 miles away from her victims and could still convince that she was legitimate.

Getting any money back is possible but at huge legal cost. It is best that *several" members of a family keep an eye on an elderly person's affairs including a solicitor and bank. The "carer" may become protective, refusing to show accounts, or become aggressive and threatening (abandoning the old person causing distress), they could be red alert signs.

It is so sad, we don't always have to look further than family when money goes missing.

Whilst I agree that educating people is important in helping stopping scams, what I want to know is what is the government itself is doing to stop and prevent scammers from operating?

Only been defrauded once by someone who took an order for some car parts who worked in a local garage who passed on my debit card details. The card details were then used to buy phone credit. My bank informed me and reissued a new card. They were not interested in taking it further. I am pretty wise as to all the phishing scams etc and have shield over all my wifi cards! Also people need to shield their keyless car key in an aluminium tin to block the signals!

Always log off . Particularly when using online banking.

Sorry that posted twice.