More than 150million scam and spam calls have been flagged by O2's AI-powered 'call defence' tech since it launched in November. The feature, which was automatically activated on all compatible phones on the O2 network, aims to warn customers of potentially fraudulent calls before they answer.

Having seen an article about a celebrity who was 'making money while she slept' via an investment with Equistak, that had an initial £250 deposit, I decided to call the number provided. Over the next few weeks, I did see unreasonable profit accrue, and invested more. But they then became very pushy, wanting me to invest £10,000 - which I do not have. I asked to close my account and send the balance to my personal bank account, but it never arrived.

Around 6.6 million people in the UK have lost money to online scams in the last year, according to Which?. And three quarters of those conned fell victim on the websites of technology giants who previously committed to the government's voluntary Online Fraud Charter in November 2023. Tech companies - including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube - vowed to adopt 'a raft of measures' within six months to protect users from scam content.

Last month, Caroline Enderby discovered 14,000 Nectar points had been used at a Sainsbury's petrol station in July without her knowledge. Cathy was told the points would only be refunded once she visited the fuel station, because it is one that she occasionally uses.

Banks will be made to repay scam victims from 7 October, but the maximum amount they can refund has been drastically reduced. The new rules will see the maximum payout slashed from the £415,000 limit which was proposed in an earlier draft of the regulations.

Entrepreneur turned campaigner Dave Fishwick has revealed the things he wants everyone to know about keeping their mobile phone safe from thieves, after he spent a day 'catching baddies' with City of London police officers. Fishwick hit the streets with Sergeant Stu Ford, part of the team that this year apprehended Sonny Stringer - one of the most notorious London phone thieves.

With many people flocking to UK beaches over the summer holidays , the importance of keeping your personal possessions safe is key. But millions of people lose items every year at the seaside - or suffer thefts.

Criminals are paying Facebook to advertise their fake cash and the posts are being left to be viewed by vulnerable victims, This Is Money can reveal. Earlier this year, we revealed how criminals were brazenly using social media sites , including Facebook, to target vulnerable users offering free postage and discounts on counterfeit notes.

Over six per cent of people in England and Wales were the victim of fraud during the period, more than double the three per cent that experienced vehicle related theft, and three times that of victims of criminal damage or bicycle theft.

Malware - or malicious software - is helping to fuel a murky underworld of bank card theft on the dark web, it has been revealed. Criminals are selling software programs to other criminals which allow them to more easily harvest unsuspecting victims' personal card details - often on 'subscriptions' costing as little as £80 per month.

Millions of bank account details could be at risk of sale to cyber criminals after Santander became the target of a cyber attack by hacking group ShinyHunters. Last month's hack, which preceded a similar attack on Ticketmaster, has led to data relating to all of the European lender's 210,000 staff, as well as millions of its customers, being compromised.

Patrick became aware that a company had been set up using his home address in Oldham, Manchester. The company, which was set up on 4 April, was set up to grow crops and was based in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, nearly 200 miles away from the house Patrick has lived in for 30 years.

Britons are gearing up for the summer and events like Glastonbury and the Euros are just around the corner. But criminals are also planning their own summer bonanza, as these packed events are ripe with opportunities to steal unassuming victims' phones. In the past, criminals would steal a phone to sell on for a quick profit - but today, they are more interested in using it to gain access to your bank account. Here's what you can do to make sure thieves don't drain your money.

As with our debit and credit cards, we expect some level of security when we hand over our details to supermarkets. Sadly, some Sainsbury's customers can't say the same. We have written about many instances where Sainsbury's customers have their Nectar points stolen. Why won't the supermarket do anything about it?

In December, I was mugged and had my phone stolen while on a night out. Around £3,900 was transferred from my savings account to my Revolut account, where I believe it was used to buy cryptocurrency. I reported all of this to the police and to Revolut, but it has declined to reimburse me, saying I 'authorised' the transactions. The money taken was my entire savings. I have just moved out of my parents' house in to my own place and without it I'm starting to struggle financially.

Customers of Booking.com have told how they lost money after falling for a convincing fraud perpetrated through the website's messaging app. As previously reported by This is Money, the hotel and short let website's messaging system has been infiltrated by scammers, who tell customers that they need to pay additional fees to secure their booking and pocket the cash.

In a car park somewhere on the rugged Cornish coast, a Ghanaian scammer stands shivering and confused. He has been sent here to collect the payment for 10kg of non-existent gold promised to the victim of one of his scams. The fraudster is expecting to get £234,000 in cash. It's a massive sum, by far outweighing the costs of the 6,000 mile round trip from the Ghanaian capital, Accra. But, he has been tricked by a new wave of scambaiters. Here, two scambaiters tell us their favourite techniques - and how to stay safe from scams.

App stores are nothing if not unwieldy beasts. Every month, thousands of apps are added to the Google Play Store, with 62,000 apps added to the platform in November 2023 alone. Likewise, the Apple App Store saw 38,000 apps added during the same month. Unsurprisingly, with such high volumes of content, apps masquerading as legitimate can, and do, slip through the net. While the best advice is to stick to official app stores when downloading apps, it appears that this is by no means a foolproof method.

It can take less than six hours to hack 90 per cent of passwords, according to research, leaving your online identity, personal data, and bank accounts just clicks away from any hacker worth their salt. But depressingly the two most common passwords remain 'password' and '123456'. Here's how to best keep yourself cyber secure in 2024.

Scammers continue to ride roughshod over the law, targeting people with phone calls, text messages, emails, social media requests and even letters. Some are easy to spot from a mile off, with many of us having been contacted by a Nigerian prince in need of help reclaiming his lost inheritance, or received a poorly-worded email warning that at least 574 viruses have been detected on our PCs. However, the vast majority are not quite so easy to spot, and fraudsters are coming up with new ones all the time. According to research from Which? shared exclusively with This is Money, there are five new scams that people should keep a keen eye out for this year.

Customers booking holiday accommodation on the website Booking.com are urged to be aware of scammers impersonating genuine hotels. We have seen messages from fraudsters which appeared on the site's secure messaging portal, asking them to make payments to secure a reservation. This is similar to a previous scam reported in October 2023, when a number of travellers also said they had received fraudulent messages asking for payment.

Shoppers have been warned about the purchase scams to watch out for in 2024 by Lloyds Bank. Thousands of people hunting for tickets, cars, pets, and much more were tricked into handing money over to fraudsters this year, with purchase scams soaring by 42 per cent compared to last year. These are the biggest scams shoppers need to watch out for in 2024.