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If you get an email you think may be genuine you can check by hitting reply and seeing what address then comes up. If it suddenly converts to something unexpected then you know its a cleverly disguised scam email.

I haven't fallen for a scam yet (touch wood.) I'm quite gullible in real life, but I'm always super-aware when I'm on the internet. I won't even do internet banking because I'm too paranoid.

I thought last week that my Amazon account had been hacked as my bank statement showed an amount that was not on my Amazon orders. I rang them and the customer service was fantastic. She eventually found it! It was something I had ordered 6 months ago and only just been delivered. No saying I had wasted their time, just pleased to be able to help me.

Luckily, and touching wood, we've never been scammed but have come close. Things are looking more genuine now, especially emails and text messages. If in doubt, I always go directly to the website by typing the URL into my browser to check my messages etc and never click links in emails or text messages.

My phone blocks unwanted calls so I don't need to listen to scammers' rubbish. I always hover over emails to check senders addresses .. this makes it easy to ignre the dubious ones !!

a few years ago I got a email saying I had won a large cash amount, I do a lot of comps and it seemed possible!! They wanted the bank info, DOB etc, which luckily I didn't give out. It gave all the info including the courier delivering the cheque, so after calming down, we got in touch by phone, the number was genuine, and spoke to the courier ( a big international company), alarm bells began to ring when the person in charge had no information at all regarding this, he was quite concerned himself too and after some investigation, we concluded it to be a scam. Luckily, we didn't go down the personal info route, so no problems there, but just to show, even a savvy person can get sucked in to these scams. Be careful out there.

Never click on links you get in emails if there financial business mentioned as the link may well not go to the site you think it is. Eg if you get an email from your bank or from paypal or even the inland revenue or similar. If you click on the link you may well get taken to a site that is set up to look like your bank/paypal etc but is actually fraudulent. Check it out with your actual bank or go to their website through a search engine- never click links.

Here are some sensible precautions. Always type in site address yourself. Never give any financial information to a caller without calling the company on their official number. Don't believe any caller who tells you your computer has a problem and they can fix it. Never give our your age or personal information to telephone callers. The Telephone Preference Service can reduce the number of nuisance callers.

I receive many, many emails on a daily basis - many, many of these are clearly suspicious and some not so clearly. I've learnt never to click links and certainly never to open emails as even if you do not respond to a scam there are often malicious viruses attached to such. Sadly, I think I we all have to remain suspicious of everything until the opposite is proven! I simply delete everything that is potentially damaging in whatever way! Keep your wits about you, be vigilant, and always use your common sense!

I frequently receive calls from abroad purporting to be troubleshooters for microsoft. They get short shrift from me and in the past one of them actually threatened to murder me when I told him that if I was his mother I would be ashamed of what he did for a job.
Good luck with that!

These scammers are a pain in the butt. Not a day goes by without some kind of e-mail or telephone call from someone trying to extract money. You have to be very careful nowadays.

On email never click on links from what appear to be from a financial organisation.
On the telephone never give financial details or account details to anyone. The bank will not ask you over the phone.

I was once the victim of a credit card scam at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, I had flown in and needed to buy a ticket for the train into Paris. I went to the ticket booth and the man said my card had not been accepted and asked me to enter it again which I did, he said again that it didn't work and I paid by cash.

Luckily for me my credit card provider at the time (Barclays) were quick off the mark and contacted me by telephone to let me know, they advised that two attempts had been made to pay for the ticket. Luckily I was still at the station so I went back to the booth to challenge the member of staff about this.

Subsequently there were no charges made to my credit card and I wonder if my challenge did the trick at preventing this.

I feel I am quite knowledgeable about finance matters yet I was caught out in this situation, on reflection this was probably due to me being in a strange country and being unsure of my surroundings.

This shows that anyone can be a victim of fraud, however to protect myself I always use a credit card to purchase items now as it gives me added protection. Luckily I've not been a victim again.

My father in law has recently been impersonated for financial gain (applying for a credit card). We think the people had been through his bin, as they had certain information, like his name, age and address, but not his correct birthdate. It's really made me realise why shredding your personal data and letters is so important.

Any emails from addresses I do not recognise go straight in the spam folder

I've had my email and paypal accounts hacked several times. I've had to change my passwords a lot

I was actually caught out by a scam a few years ago and it took me a good few months to even realise! I had signed up to a contract phone at Phones4U. It was my first ever contract phone and I took out the monthly insurance on the handset. I hadn't given my new number out to anyone other than family, and the day after I got the phone I received a phone call from someone purporting to be my mobile insurance company. They explained that my insurance premium had gone down and they knew all about what handset I had bought, where I had bought it and when.. they even knew how much the insurance I had taken out was! Due to all this I thought it was completely legit - boy was I wrong! They asked me to confirm my card details, which I did as I believed that they were genuinely my phone insurance company. It was only around 10 months later that I realised that I was being billed for phone insurance twice, by two different companies! Luckily my bank refunded all the money no-questions-asked, but it could have been much worse than that!

My experience is when you get a phone call you don’t recognise don’t answer you can look a number up on who called me that way you can find out if it’s a genuine or scam phone call then block the number never give out personal bank details such as pins and passwords and when an email comes through saying it’s from your bank and to click the link to login don’t always open a new link or log in to your bank through the genuine website or app

I've been scammed once. I clicked on a pop-up that c came up on the Amazon site. You had to answer 3 questions about Amazon and put in your bank details for the postage!!

The next day I thought about it then decided to phone Barclays. It was indeed a scam, luckily I only lost £80. Apparently this was a well known scam to them and they had picked it up and blocked any further payments to them.

Taught me a lesson and I thought I was quite switched on to to scammy stuff.

I've had a couple of occasions of people using my PayPal account to buy stuff... even though I'd never used it!! PayPal were really good at refunding my money, but I ended up closing the account as I didn't use it.

It is extremely worrying that large organisations are not forced to disclose breaches of security to the people who they have let down within 24 hours so that action can be taken to change passwords etc. They seem to spend 6 months or even years "investigating" only to then issue a vague statement containing little or no facts. By then any fraud will have taken place. And they seem to go unpunished.

Do not press on a link re email in spam account.

i have several emails a day purporting to be from my bank and asking me to follow links. i always delete straight away as sometimes they are from banks i know i havent got any connection with

they are scary... if anything seems wrong double check it!

you just have to be careful.