- This season, I've already uncovered a bunch of ways that our everyday use, and often reliance, on tech can be exploited. We've heard of companies buying fake reviews to push them up the search results and increase the likelihood of you or I spending our hard-earned cash on their potentially subpar products. We've heard of hackers gaining access to your home through your smart tech, even speaking to parents through baby monitors and driving cars off the road. Well, kind of. Check out episode 2 to hear more on that one.

For the most part though, throughout this tech and security season of Which? Investigates, I have been talking with experts about what could be done, what concerns might develop. However, today, I want to tackle something that definitely is happening. And, more and more often, it feels, people are getting scammed out of their money.

- "Scam warning-- Britons lose 50,000 pounds to convincing WhatsApp fraud."

- That is a headline from last week. And here's another.

- "Warning over Amazon scam after a woman lost 20K to email fraudster pretending to be from retailer."

- And one more.

- "Man loses one and a half thousand pounds in Christmas savings after being targeted by scammers."

- Three stories in three weeks, and they just took a quick google to find. In fact, I would be surprised if you can take a scroll through your social media or a flick through a newspaper without finding a recent tale of an unsuspecting person being scammed out of their money.

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According to Which?'s own analysis of data released earlier this year by Action Fraud, looking at the period from April 2020 to March 2021, there has been a 33% year-on-year increase in the number of scams reported with more than 2.3 billion pounds being lost by victims as a result. And that deserves repeating, right? Over 2 billion pounds has been lost to scams in the last year alone.

And that got me thinking, could this have happened without the advances in technology that we've seen in recent years? Back in the day, a scammer would need to find your address and post you a letter or knock on your door or find your landline number and give you a call. Sure, scams can and do still happen like that, but do our apps and our digital footprint leave us more exposed, more susceptible, to cons? I'm Greg Foot. And this week's Which? Investigates asks, is technology making life easier for scammers?

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Which? Investigates is a podcast from the UK's consumer champion. We work to make life simpler, fairer, and safer for everyone. In this season, I'm exploring concerns around tech and security.

Are you being misled by fake reviews? How hackable is your home? And we're going to wrap up the season next week by asking, how much is too much tech? If you've got something that you'd like us to investigate, do get in touch. If you're on social media, I'm @gregfoot and Which? Is @WhichUK. And you can email us on podcasts@which.co.uk.

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Coming up, we hear whether enough is being done to target the criminals.

- It's basically a game of Whac-A-Mole at the moment. Not enough is happening without that legal framework in place to ensure that they have to do more about these scam adverts, whether they will ever do enough to knock these into the long grass.

- I ask whether tech has actually made us more trusting, too trusting, perhaps.

- Trust is an interesting concept. Sometimes, we find people are very, very mistrusting of technology, particularly older generations. They'll view the computer as something that is out to get them. Then, the younger people, I think the opposite is true, that they may be a bit too trusting of technology. They sort of embrace things and download an app without even thinking about it because their friends are using it and don't think, well, actually, what's that app doing, what does it want from you, and so on and so forth.

- And I find out whether the best way to solve the scamming problem will be by using tech itself.

- I do think that tech could help provide a solution to forms of scam and fraud. I think that just because I've seen tech companies do so many other clever things. If you can put your energies into revolutionising the banking system and launching a whole load of new banks with much better features, then you should also see it as your responsibility to help protect those customers. You've clearly got the resources and the ingenuity.

- Back in June of this year, Citizens Advice did some research that found that 36 million people had already been targeted by scams in 2021. That's 36 million of us scammed in just the first half of the year. And why is that number so high?

- Technology has undoubtedly made life easier for scammers. Well, when we say easier, maybe it's given them much more opportunity. The key thing that scammers have is contact channels to get in touch with us to defraud us. And, 50 years ago, basically, you could defraud someone via the post, maybe over the phone, probably in person. And doorstep scammers were certainly a problem that stretched back a long, long time.

Technology now has just expanded hugely the different communication channels available to us. We now have email, tweets. We have voice calls, WhatsApp. There's so many different ways that scammers can get hold of us.

And then we start going out there and searching things on a site like Google. You start to participate on social media. And, again, the scammers are there, another way that they can get in contact with us and target us. And that's really where the opportunity has come from for these criminals to take advantage of.

- This is Adam French, a consumer rights expert at Which?. And it's clear that, again, we have hit on an answer to our investigation's question in record time. However, as we've found before, the more interesting answers come when we dig into the how and the why of this scamdemic, as some people have called it.

- Technology really does make life easier for scammers. Particularly, what it does is make it easier for scammers to reach us and find out who we are and where we are, where we're hanging out on the internet, on our phones. Just an average day doesn't really go by without just me personally receiving a scam email, a scam text, some sort of strange message on social media. And it doesn't necessarily mean that any of these have any success, but I think that it does mean that scammers can just attack us on so many fronts all the time, where it used to be that they could only maybe get a single phone number or something for you.

- This is Alice Key, another journalist that you'll be hearing a lot from this week. And, as she just described there, the tactics of scammers have changed significantly over the years. With technology increasingly playing a helping hand, it feels like it's time for a spot of history.

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- For the first recorded instance of fraudulent financial behaviour, we have to go back to 300 BC and ancient Greece where a sea merchant named Hegestratos was looking to insure his ship and cargo. In fact, what he was looking to do was to sink his empty ship and sell the cargo, corn in this instance, and keep the loan given to him by the insurer.

Now, unfortunately for Hegestratos, he was caught in the act of ship sinking by his own crew who then chased him off the ship. And he drowned trying to escape them. But that was likely the first recorded case of first-party fraud, which is when an individual makes a promise of future repayments without the intent to repay.

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Fast forward 500 years or so, and we arrive in the Roman Empire. And we turn to an elite group of loyal soldiers whose job it is to protect the emperor. However, after the death of the then emperor Pertinax, they announced that the throne to the Roman Empire would be sold to whoever would pay the highest price.

Julianus won the seat with a bid of 250 pieces of gold for every soldier in the army, an equivalent total of around 1 billion pounds today. A problem, though, the guards had sold something that didn't belong to them, making this perhaps one of the first recorded cases of financial fraud, when someone takes money or other assets from you through deception or criminal activity.

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On then to the 1800s, the golden age of financial fraud and the introduction of the term con man, modes of communication were much slower, of course, than today. The telephone was yet to be invented, and it was easier for criminals to move from town to town, repeating the same cons time after time without, often, being found. In fact, according to The New York Times, one thing that was sold multiple times by con men claiming to own it was the Brooklyn Bridge.

Scams have come a long way since then. And, yes, faster communication and a more connected society means warnings spread quicker. But could that same speed and connection work in the scammers' favour?

- The classic one, scam emails, someone could be sat in a country in Africa or India or wherever, and they can just pump out thousands and thousands of emails and work on a very small percentage might respond and fall for it, but they can just do that at very, very low cost.

- This is Professor Mark Button, the Director of the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies. And Adam from Which? Agrees that our modern-day thirst for instant messaging is very much part of the problem.

- To be honest, any channel you have is open to fraud. And we have found examples constantly across so many different channels where scams are happening, whether it's in your inbox, whether it's phone calls out of the blue telling you that your bank has been compromised, for example, and you need to move your money to a safe account, a very convincing scam that a lot of people have received and been caught out by over years. In fact, I remember, way back in 2015, helping someone who had lost 50,000 to a scam like that. And those are still going on today.

One of the most recent ones that really has exploded is fake messaging scams actually around deliveries. A lot of people have been receiving text messages saying that they've got a delivery out, and they need to pay a small fee. And it links through to a fairly convincing-looking website. That site is designed to defraud you out of a small amount of money and steal your personal information. And these are all really hard to spot and show that scammers are constantly evolving their approach to stay one step ahead of what we're all doing.

- With Christmas just a couple of weeks away, talk of these delivery scams is definitely a worry. But, later in this episode, I'll share details of Which?'s scam alert service, which is something that can help you stay one step ahead of the scammers. I'll also fill you in on some of the other scams that you should be aware of too.

For now, though, a question-- when did you last receive a suspicious text or email or get a scam phone call? And what did you do when you got it?

- I think we just sort of accept it as part of our lives that you just have to talk to the scammer for a minute or that you have to block an account or whatever it is that you need to do. And I think we've almost lost the right to feel particularly affronted because it is just feeling so normal.

- Alice is right. This is normalised now. And, although we're put out by it, we just accept these scam attempts as part of everyday life.

- It's become so prevalent and so common that it's almost something we expect now. You know, when you open your emails, most people assume that there is a chance that you're going to get an email from a scammer. If you're answering your telephone, looking at a text message, again, you've become increasingly attuned because of just the huge numbers of these types of frauds and scams that are targeting us.

So it's become so endemic. It's almost like a normal part of society now. And lots of people make jokes in entertainment about it. It's become so normalised. But, unfortunately, still, large numbers of people fall for them. And some of the scammers are very sort of innovative and clever in the way they develop scams.

- According to a survey carried out earlier this year by YouGov, one in four of us reported receiving scam content on a daily basis. And here are the most common topics of these scam messages-- the census, bogus tax rebates or penalties, mobile phone contracts, fake texts from delivery firms, and coronavirus vaccines.

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Yeah, scammers have been exploiting the pandemic. Firstly, there's been greater opportunity, as we're all online so much more. And, secondly, they've been able to lean into people's uncertainty around the virus.

- People who, prior to the pandemic, might have been reluctant to engage with some of the many technologies we now have or used them infrequently have just been forced to do them. So things like online banking, shopping online, socialising with individuals, going dating online, all of these different types of activities have become much more prevalent. And all of those activities create opportunities for fraudsters.

- From texts about COVID passports to fake links to book imaginary vaccines, there are, sadly, countless examples of these scams. There's also the rise in fake news content too, as described here by an expert in the subject, Professor Kalina Bontcheva.

- I mean, the pandemic exacerbated very rapidly the disinformation prevalence, up to the point of turning it into what we dubbed as the infodemic.

- And, as I've already touched on in this season, the pandemic has sped up the tech revolution. And that comes with its own dangerous consequences.

- Since coronavirus has hit and remains going, we've obviously seen very severe changes in society. And one of these has been a real acceleration of people adopting online technologies. Obviously, we're spending more time at home, but we're also getting more used to accessing things online that we need. And that includes not only services such as critical services, but also banking, online shopping. But, obviously, if those services don't have proper security and privacy and scam protection in place, that can give people new kind of risks in terms of being targeted.

- This is Andy Laughlin, one of the principal researchers in the product testing team here at Which?. And he has seen firsthand how criminals can exploit websites and devices that don't have the right protections. Adam, who works with Andy, told me more.

- Scams went up 33% during the pandemic in terms of reported scams to official investigators, which is a huge, huge number. One of the biggest ones was online shopping fraud. And where are people finding these fraudulent online shops? It's online, and it's going to be search engines like Google or Bing. It's going to be promoted to them on social media, so sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

Those are the places where these scammers are able to advertise to us. And, at the moment, there is just not enough protections in place for consumers to mean that we're not going to be taken advantage of in this way. And that's a real concern.

- Episode 4 of this second season of Which? Investigates was all about fake reviews. And, as it's present-buying season, that may be well worth a listen if you haven't yet. But Adam there is talking about more than fake reviews, fake adverts. And he expands on it.

- All we're really talking about here is an advert that purports to be one thing, purports to be legitimate, but actually is leading you through into another thing. And, in that sense, it's very similar to phishing.

- We haven't actually talked about phishing since our mobile phone episode in season 1. So let's get a definition refresher.

- Phishing means a message, an SMS, even a voice call, that's designed to trick you into thinking that it's something or someone else, thereby, giving away information that you maybe wouldn't.

- Cheers, Andy. OK, back to what these fake adverts are phishing for then.

- This can include display adverts, which kind of pull you in on one thing, but actually are about another. It maybe could also include things like the quizzes that go online where they're personality quizzes, but are designed to pull in your data. Or it could be actually when someone is talking about something with a great deal of authority, but actually have a desire to push a product that they have a commercial relationship with and all sorts of manner of things where the line is very blurred between what is an advert and what isn't and what is "the truth," in inverted commas, and what maybe is a mistruth, if you know what I mean.

- It's a worry, isn't it, that modern-day technology now provides us not only a platform to communicate with a global audience online, but, with the right know-how, a bit of creativity with a logo or a website or a fake product, you can now also entice and scam that global audience. This is something here at Which? That we, of course, are particularly interested in. And we actually created our own fake product to investigate how far we could take it.

- Back in 2020, we were quite concerned about how particularly the new tech giants can be used to sort of supercharge advertising. So Which? Created, basically, a water brand called Remedy, completely made up, made some display adverts-- lots of healthy people running and enjoying the benefits to their mood and to their health and their waistline from this miraculous water, which had some incredible ingredients, which were largely made up.

But we did want to see, well, how far can we go with this, with a product that doesn't actually even exist. And the truth is pretty far. So we managed to get quite high rankings with Google Search advertising. We managed to create a whole Facebook page and start distributing advice. We were able to set ourselves up as an expert about hydration with actually no provenance whatsoever. We had no qualifications, nothing that would suggest that this is some trusted source.

- Trust is something that I want to turn to in a second. But first, though, what happened when we told the tech giants about our investigation?

- We contacted Facebook about our findings. And it said that, actually, none of the adverts that we put up violated its community standards. And we weren't actually selling any products. So, therefore, we weren't actually a problem.

Now, obviously, we didn't scam anybody. So we weren't going to do that. But, obviously, we do recognise that other people maybe don't have the standards and the ethics that we do and may go a bit further. And Facebook said it removes harmful misinformation that could contribute to physical harm, such as false health claims, and has strict policies in place against deceptive advertising and scams.

We also contacted Google. And, ever since, Google has taken a bit more control over who can advertise on Search. Now, at the time, all we needed to do was have a Gmail account. I just used my own. I wasn't exactly hiding. And I was advertising within minutes using that.

Now, it's a bit harder. You actually have to prove who you are. And Google has sort of introduced various different measures. Now, we will obviously keep a close eye on that, but, obviously, Google is making some progress on trying to tackle, or at least make it more transparent, who is advertising to who. But, obviously, we're keeping a close eye on developments in that space.

- And what's that? Some actually good news. Can we have a good news klaxon, please, editor Erik?

[klaxon honking]

Now, our investigation actually encouraged Google to improve its own ad guidelines, which is something we're pretty proud of. That said, it's clear that there is still a long way to go, especially as many people aren't just setting up their own fake advert. They're imitating legitimate companies too, as Alice explains.

- Something I have a lot of experience with is fake Instagram accounts, which pretend to be a reputable brand or person or company. And I've discovered this when I was trying to be a comper, which is, essentially, someone who enters hundreds and hundreds of giveaways and competitions every day.

Unfortunately, a certain set of scammers have worked out a really easy way to scam the people entering the competitions by pretending to be the brand running it, setting up a fake account as them, messaging people who they can see have entered the competition because it's all happening in a public comment section, and then telling them, oh, you've won the prize. Here's a link. Just put in your credit card information so that you can pay for the postage for it to get to you. Or give us your bank details so that we can transfer you the money. They'll come up with whatever excuse.

- And here's another example from Mark.

- I've seen software that can easily copy websites. So seeing a website that looks like the real website doesn't guarantee that it is the real website, such is the ability of some scammers to use technology to impersonate those types of things. One of the things we're learning to deal with is, how do you spot authentic things online?

- Once again, the onus is on us to figure out for ourselves what is and isn't trustworthy. And that's something that isn't exactly easy, is it?

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Let's talk trust then. Here's Andy from Which? Again.

- We have to say that companies haven't exactly brought levels of trust up to a good level. So we so frequently hear about data breaches to the point where, actually, they are, basically, just a daily occurrence. We hear about companies messing up with digital systems. And then we also hear about changes in privacy policies, changes in data agreements that kind of snuck through in a way that maybe doesn't really show a great level of care for the people who are using those services. And that doesn't engender an environment of trust.

- However, I wondered if, somewhat counterintuitively to what we've heard so far, technology has also made us more trusting.

- Trust is an interesting concept. And I think it's one of the most important concepts in all of this because trust really is about how well placed it is. So, sometimes, we find people are very, very mistrusting of technology, particularly older generations. They'll view the computer as something that is out to get them.

Then, the younger people, I think the opposite is true that they're maybe a bit too trusting of technology. They sort of embrace things and download an app without even thinking about it because their friends are using it and don't think, well, actually, what's that app doing, what does it want from you, and so on and so forth.

- This is also something I put to fake news expert, Kalina.

- I wouldn't say that we have become more trusting. It's more that the technology has made the false content harder to distinguish for the average citizen, especially those from the older generations, which are less technology savvy.

The other aspect of this is the pure information overload because we've got Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Telegram, whatever, in amongst all the other sources of information. So it's not always possible. You can just kind of glance at something on WhatsApp, and you think, oh yeah, that looks credible, but you don't really have time to check it.

- And this imitation game can go even further too, as Adam from Which? Told me.

- Last year, Which? Found a scam site selling CBD oil. It wasn't selling anything. It was just taking your money, using fake endorsements from Sir David Attenborough on them because he's such a trusted person. He's a national treasure, and scammers look to leech off of that, effectively, to try and make their advertising look more trustworthy.

- You know what's funny? In the process of writing this investigation, I actually got an email from popular money expert, Martin Lewis, offering me the chance to invest in Bitcoin. Yeah. Did I click on it? No. No, I didn't.

Back in 2016, there was a large survey in the US conducted by the Pew Research Centre and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Centre. They asked major players in the tech industry this question.

- As more people move online globally, both opportunities and threats grow. Will people's trust in their online interactions, their work, shopping, social connections, pursuit of knowledge, and other activities, be strengthened or diminished over the next 10 years?

- It led to some interesting results. Of the 1,200-plus people who responded, 48% said that they thought trust will be strengthened. 28% believed that trust will stay the same. And 24% predicted that trust will be diminished.

Fast forward to today then, five years later, and I wonder how many of those surveyed would change their answer. Just last year, Patricia Hardré of the University of Oklahoma wrote that, quote, "Technology overtrust is an error of staggering proportion." And that's something I'll be exploring even further next week in the final episode of this season.

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I think part of the problem why people fall for scams via WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or even a phone call to their mobile, I guess, is because they used to be channels used solely for personal communication. But those days have gone because, increasingly, legitimate businesses are now using them too.

- There's usually a disclaimer saying, we will never contact you via x and y channel. Maybe they'll say they'd never email you, or maybe they say that they will never call you without you calling them first. But I would just say that, obviously, most banks and other companies are using all these other ways of talking to us, right down to Facebook Messenger, which does not feel like a terribly official way of talking to you.

- Yeah, I regularly get a text that tells me that a bank statement is ready or that a parcel has been delivered, albeit to Maureen three doors down. But, indeed, as Adam mentioned at the start of this episode, delivery text scams are one of those that is on the rise. And could some of us be more at risk of falling victim to those than others?

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The stereotype tells us that it's often older people who end up being defrauded. But is that always the case?

- Unfortunately, it is often older consumers who are targeted. But, actually, I think that's maybe slightly misinterpreting the overall trend because, actually, young people, although they are more savvy generally, they're also more exposed.

- Because, as we heard earlier, they're more trusting or less critical maybe. Either way, they're happy to download the latest app and potentially share more personal information. Indeed, according to the Local Government Association, one in five of people aged 16 to 34 have been scammed in recent years. That's 20% compared with just 4% of those aged 55 and over. So older people aren't scammed more often, and age isn't the only determining factor.

- So, at Which?, we went and spoke to an analyst about what kind of personality traits could make you more vulnerable to different types of scams. So, if you're more inclined to worry as a person-- you're maybe slightly more neurotic-- then, actually, authority-based scams can be really effective against you, so things like phone calls out of the blue saying this is HMRC. There's a warrant out for your arrest. You need to make some payments.

However, like flip-side of that, say, if you're a bit more agreeable-- you don't tend to think too much through the consequences of your actions-- then things like romance scams can really take advantage of you as well. Especially if you find yourself lonely at the same time, which can be a lot of people, then romance scams can really take advantage of you where you think you meet someone online. And, actually, over the course of many months, they work you over, convincing you you're in a real relationship when, actually, they're just designed to take cash from you.

And, actually, if you're an extrovert, outgoing as well, the other type of scam to look out for is investment scams as well. So, if you've got savings that aren't earning anything, then, actually, being convinced very quickly in a very sociable way that, actually, this is a great investment-- you should take advantage of it-- if you're not going to think things through in that way, the investment scams can really take advantage of you.

And then, finally, if you're quite a quiet and reserved character, actually, if you're more introverted, then scams such as Bitcoin scams, things that are characterised by sort of consensus and feel like everyone else is doing it-- maybe I'm missing out-- can really take advantage of your personality type there as well.

- Fascinating, isn't it, to think how different people will have varying susceptibilities to the whole range of scams. Now, before I wrap up today's investigation, I want to briefly defend technology, to stand in its corner and support it.

[klaxon honking]

[laughs]

- Thank you, Erik, for the good news klaxon. My suggestion then is this-- that, although tech has made it easier for the scammers to reach us and gain or, indeed, con our trust to get money out of us, perhaps tech could also help provide us with protection and make life harder for the scammers. And I put my theory to our experts.

- I do think that tech could help provide a solution to forms of scam and fraud. I think that just because I've seen tech companies do so many other clever things. I just think, if you can put your energies into revolutionising the banking system and launching a whole load of new banks with much better features and various reasons why people are changing the way that they bank and the way that they shop, then you should also see it as your responsibility to help protect those customers. And you've clearly got the resources and the ingenuity. So I just think that there has to be more that the technology industry can be doing to help prevent these scams that are happening so frequently.

- Technology is always about who's using it. I mean, we can now utilise technology to target scammers in incredible ways. So, for example, the National Cyber Security Centre has a programme which looks at URL takedown. So when we talked earlier about the scammy web links, so things which come online and say, I am Microsoft Support dot x dot y dot com, and you go and land on that URL, and it suddenly says, hey, come and talk to us, and we'll take some malware off your computer, and, actually, they charge you 500 quid to do absolutely nothing-- the best way we can target them is by, a, making it harder for them to get ranking and get up there, but, equally, when we find them, take them down as fast as possible.

It doesn't solve the problem, but it certainly helps remove some of the risk of other people clicking on that link and saying, oh, yeah, I'll have a go at this and then, obviously, getting scammed again.

- And I read this story too. HSBC revealed earlier this year how they have been using a voice ID technology, and it stopped nearly 250 million pounds of customers' money from going to telephone fraudsters over the past year alone. The technology works by detecting whether the voice of the person calling the bank matches the one that HSBC have held on file for the customer, thwarting attempts of fraudsters trying to gain access to accounts using stolen or guessed personal data.

And that is good news, a big company using tech to protect its customers. But, as Adam from Which? Says, there's still an awfully long way to go.

- Technology definitely has improved our lives. It has made it easier to communicate. There are huge benefits to that. And let's not forget these technology companies have swiftly become some of the wealthiest companies on the planet. There is a huge amount of good they do, and there's a huge amount of wealth they generate.

But that comes with certain responsibilities. We're very clear that these platforms, these big tech firms, need to have a degree of responsibility for looking after their users that just isn't there at the moment. And, in particular, when it comes to scams, that's very evident.

It's basically a game of Whac-A-Mole at the moment. Not enough is happening without that legal framework in place to ensure that they will ever do enough to knock these into the long grass. We're talking about big tech firms that funnel billions into analysing our behaviour as consumers and figuring out how to get us to spend more money, how to get us to spend more time on their sites, how to get us to interact with things, how to get us to give away more information. That same effort needs to be put into actually protecting us whilst we're using those platforms as well.

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- Until there is the legal framework or another motivation to get the big tech firms to see and act on that responsibility, what can we and our friends and family do to stay one step ahead?

- I think the key takeaway for me is don't think of online as different to normal life. You know, you walk down a street. You go around town. You're at home. And you have a general level of kind of understanding of vigilance. You know, don't walk down that dark alley.

We can transfer all these natural vigilances we have into the online world. So, if something is saying you can get a pair of Ray-Bans for 10 pounds, maybe be careful with that. If something is asking you to do a fun personality quiz, maybe exert a bit of caution. If you set up an account for something, don't use like your cat's name as a password.

And, overall, take a breath before you click. Pause. Think. Then click that's just, for me, the fundamental advice that I give to people is says just consider what's going on and whether it might be not what you think it is.

- The simplest advice of all that I would give to anyone is to be incredibly sceptical and particularly about any kind of unsolicited communication. So, if you get an email that's purporting to be from your bank and you don't normally get those kinds of emails, then you should start with the basis that it's a scam. And you need to find evidence otherwise to prove it.

So starting with that sceptical position, I think, is very important. If you are in doubt, seek the advice and support of friends, family, experts. If you've got access to them, search them out.

- And, before I finish, something else that could help is Which?'s scam alert. It's an email alert where we send through a list of the latest scams that are doing the rounds. And we also include practical advice to keep you one step ahead of the scammers. If you'd like to sign up for that, I'll put the link in the show notes.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Which? Investigates. If you think it could be helpful for a friend or a colleague or a family member, please do send it over to them. Also, if you found this episode or any of this season's investigations interesting and helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could put a quick review up on Apple Podcasts.

Also also, level three of helping us out I guess, if you have a few minutes free some time, we would love to hear what you think of the podcast, this tech and security season, but also our previous sustainability season too if you had to listen to that. There is a quick questionnaire over at which.co.uk/investigates.

I will be back next week with our season finale, asking how much is too much tech. If you'd like to get in touch and you're on social media, you can reach me @gregfoot. And Which? Are @WhichUK. Or you can email us on podcasts@which.co.uk.

Today's episode was presented by me, Greg Foot, written and produced by me and Rob Lilley. Editing and original music is by Erik Bria. And our executive producer is Angus Farquhar. Special thanks go to Richard Headland, Paul Lester, Andy Laughlin, Adam French, Lauren Deitz, and the rest of the consumer rights team here at Which?. And I'll be back next week. See you.

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