Avoiding scams

Types of scam

Rogue traders

Rogue traders give the appearance of being trade professionals such as gardeners or builders. They frequently operate by cold calling you at home, either offering a special cheap deal or pointing out some defect to your property that they claim is in urgent need of repair.

The general rule is to never have work done on your home or garden by someone who turns up at your door. It's very difficult to tell if such a person is genuine, which is why rogue traders use this approach to con many people out of a great deal of money – it’s estimated that as much as £170 million a year is stolen from UK householders by rogue traders.

These confidence tricksters can be persuasive and domineering – so don’t get into a conversation, just be firm and give a simple refusal:

• Say you don’t buy goods or services at the door
• Say you need to think about it or compare prices
• Say you need to get advice from family, a friend or an expert.

Postal and email scams

Postal scams have been around for a long while, and now email and texting have offered scammers a low-cost means of getting their scams to vast numbers of people.

There are many kinds of scam that arrive through the post or by email or text message. These include:

• Bogus lotteries or competitions. They make it seem that you’re close to a big win, and all you have to do is send the entry fee.
• Miracle cures and wonder health tonics. The promises are great but the products are either a total cheat or something you could buy much cheaper at your local health food shop.
• Unique investment opportunities. Unfortunately, an offer of getting very good returns through a newly-discovered or little-used investment technique has an almost zero chance of being genuine.

Be very wary of unsolicited post, and delete ‘spam’ emails without opening them – as well as scam offers, they may carry computer viruses. Never respond to a text from an unknown origin – once they know your number is active, you may be bombarded with texts and phone calls.

Click here for Trading Standards information on postal scams.

Only ever make investments via bona fide regulated firms, and never give any bank details at all unless you are very sure of the credentials of the person you are dealing with.

Click here for Trading Standards information investment scams.

Telephone scams

Cold-call telephone scams often involve apparent financial opportunities, and the current changes to pensions giving people greater access to their pension pots have created a new opportunity for scammers – people over 55 may receive calls inviting them to transfer their pension money into 'lucrative' investments which are, of course, bogus.

'Engineer scams' involve the caller claiming to be from Microsoft or another major software supplier, and informing you that your PC has been infected by a virus. They convince you to grant remote access to your computer in order to fix the problem, at which stage they will place software on the computer that will either disable the machine until you pay a ransom fee, or let them access your financial and confidential data.

Bank account scams involve a caller claiming that there has been a security breach on your bank account – in order to correct the problem, they'll try and convince you to give over your account details. If you do, they will empty your account.

Click here for the Thames Valley Police guide to phone scams.