Scams One-to-Ones

Scammers are shape-shifting creatures. In a digitised world, they are able to change their tactics to scam people out of money and obtain information about them.

Common types of scams include: telephone scams, doorstep scams, online scams and postal scams. According to National Trading Standards, scammers steal up to £10 billion a year in the UK, but only 5% of their victims come forward to report these crimes.

While this sounds like a grim situation, there’s a plethora of ways to build your knowledge on scams and to learn ways to protect yourself.

For example, Which.co.uk have excellent resources on their website about the latest scams and have a free scams alerts service. Stopscamsuk.org.uk have a useful service called 159, which works on the same principle as 101 for the police or 111 for the NHS. It takes you straight to your bank and is perfect for when you think someone is tricking you into parting with your money or personal details. All you do is when you are suspicious of a caller, you just hang up and call 159 to speak to your bank.

If you are Manchester-based there is also our free Scams Awareness service. The service offers one-to-one sessions that take you through the different techniques that scammers use. For example, with doorstep scams, where a scammer poses as a trader, a charity collector, or someone in need of help. Or postal scams, where material is posted to your address and you’re offered large amounts of money in return for a small fee.

We stress that, to the untrained eye or ear, scams can look authentic and be convincing. We do this through giving examples, for example, with the one below about phone call scams:

Mr Bailey’s phone rings. He picks up and hears:

“Hello this is Mark calling from IA Bank. I’m contacting you to let you know that there has been some suspicious activity on your current account. I do need to check that I’m speaking to the account holder, so please can you confirm the first part of your postcode?”

Here, the scammer can seem convincing and plays into fear. Your bank would never contact you to confirm personal details so that is one red flag to keep an eye out for.

By illustrating the pitfalls that scams can present, we can help to better prepare you for if a scam comes your way. We also make sure to signpost you towards useful services, such friendsagainstscams.org.uk, which.co.uk, and stopscamsuk.org.uk.

These resources will be there for you to reference when you want to and need to and ensure that the value of our scams session carries on and gives you knowledge that you can use.

Are you ready to learn more about how you can protect yourself from scams, and want to book a one-to-one session?

All you need to do is e-mail advice@ageukmanchester.org.uk or give us a ring on 0161 833 3944. We will then look at booking your session and help you to prepare yourself for the tactics used by scammers.