Martin Lewis recently revealed to GMB viewers that an elderly relative was duped into sharing their personal information and financial details with a phone scammer pretending to be from Microsoft Security Essentials. The consumer champion warned viewers not to trust anyone who calls out of the blue and explained that if the caller says they are from Microsoft Security Essentials, they are not - it’s a scam.
Martin told copresenter, Susanna Reid: “Scammers are very sophisticated, a close relative of mine was scammed, it was very upsetting. They were called by Microsoft Security Essentials which is not Microsoft Security Essentials - it’s scammers saying that their computer had been defrauded and in four hours on the phone thinking this person was helping them, gave all their details.”
He warned: “The honest truth is there are many times you’ll be called up by people trying to help you with scams, that’s what the scammers do.”
Martin continued: “When I spoke to this person - I don’t want to name them obviously - I spoke to them later in the day and as soon as they said ‘Microsoft Security Essentials called me’ I said it’s a scam.
“They don’t call, they won’t call you. Yes, I know you have Windows but that doesn’t mean it’s them. It took me minutes to persuade, because obviously when it’s family they treat you a different way and at one point I had to say look, forget my relationship to you, this s what I do for my job, this is a scam - you need to call all your banks, all your credit card providers right now.”
Martin also shared that three of the banks had stopped the financial transactions and one of the banks paid money out but would be refunding it because they got in touch in time.
But he added that the computer is now compromised and will need to be reset. He also said he would be checking to make sure they had not been a victim of ID fraud.
He said: “It is so easy, I know solicitors and university lecturers who have fallen for scams. You have to be sceptical, if anybody calls you out of the blue that you’re not expecting - be sceptical about it.
“It’s one of the reasons the UK Government is going to rightly block all financial cold calling on the phone.”
Last week, the UK Government said it is stepping forward in the fightback against scammers, with action to block fraudulent communications at their source and allow suspect payments to be delayed.
The new fraud strategy will include banning cold calls on all financial products, such as those relating to insurance or sham cryptocurrency schemes.
It also plans to work with Ofcom to use new technology to further clamp down on number ‘spoofing’, so fraudsters cannot impersonate legitimate UK phone numbers.
Under the plans, banks will also be allowed to delay payments from being processed for longer to allow for suspect payments to be investigated.
The UK Government said it will also ban other devices or methods commonly harnessed by scammers to reach thousands of people at once - such as so-called ‘sim farms’ and review the use of mass texting services to keep these technologies out of the hands of criminals.
Sim farms are devices that can be loaded with hundreds of sim cards and are controlled from a computer. Fraudsters use them to send thousands of scam texts at once.
To make it easier for victims to report fraud and rebuild confidence that cases are being dealt with properly, a new system, replacing the current Action Fraud service, the UK’s fraud reporting centre, will be up and running within the year.
Backed by a £30 million investment, it will provide a simpler route for reporting fraud online, with reduced waiting times and an online portal to allow victims to get timely updates on the progress of their case, the Government said.
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