Jon knew he'd been stung by the fake Royal Mail text, but didn't realise he was talking to the same scammers. The friendly sounding caller said that a direct debit had been set up for £500 and asked if it was genuine. Jon escaped a more sinister scam after receiving a fake text about an outstanding delivery fee.Ī couple of days later, Jon received a call to his mobile from Barclays. With only simple text, a URL, a sender ID and few other clues to work from, can you really tell whether it's fake? These fake text (SMS) messages act as convincing lures into more complex scams designed to wipe out your bank account. The resurgence in scam texts that could lead to your bank account being cleared out has been fuelled by fraudsters quick to exploit our reliance on online shopping during the pandemic. Scam texts aren't new, but in a year where shopping online and receiving deliveries at home has become the norm, fraudsters have jumped on the chance to fake messages from couriers. There's a good chance you've received a text message recently about a delivery you weren't expecting. Sign up to free Which? Scam Alerts and outsmart the scammers But for those caught out, the financial and emotional impact can be devastating.

Victims told us they were later called by scammers trying to trick them into sending large sums of money.įortunately, four out of five people surveyed who received a scam delivery text said they realised it was fake straight away.

The texts warn that a parcel couldn't be delivered and that a small fee was due, linking to a convincing copycat Royal Mail website requesting payment details. The scam most often reported to Which?'s Scam Sharer tool in the past three months has been fake text messages - also known as 'smishing' or SMS phishing - from Royal Mail. Three in five (61%) of 2,006 people Which? surveyed in May told us they had received a fake text claiming to be from a delivery company in the past year.

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