Watch our video with the Real Hustle’s Paul Wilson, to see how many people gave away their personal details for the chance to win a free TV…
A quarter of British adults, around 13 million, have been the victim of a scam with the average person losing more than £400.
That’s according to new research released today by Santander which saw two fifths of people who have been scammed say, at the time of the scam they felt as if something suspicious was going on, however 17% ignored their gut feeling and a further 15% say with hindsight they should have noticed something was wrong.
The latest online figures show losses of almost £11 billion* to the UK economy as a result of fraud.
Yet worryingly, 14% of people say they would do something they are uncomfortable with when put under pressure and one in eight would reply to an email from somebody they didn’t know.
One in 20 would even be comfortable giving personal security or banking details to a stranger, with the same number saying they would let someone have remote access to their computer to fix a problem they haven’t reported.
And whilst there has been a lot of coverage in recent months of scams which see scammers pretend to be calling from a bank and asking for details (something banks do not do), up to 4.6million UK adults (9%) believe that their bank would ask for their PIN, password or security numbers.
One in 14 (7%) also believe their bank would ask them to transfer money out of their account for security reasons, or ask for remote access to their computer (6%).
A social experiment was also conducted to coincide with the research saw people asked in a shopping centre to complete ‘market research’ including giving their names, date of birth, email address, bank account details and NI number…watch our video to see what happened….
