According to the Office for National Statistics, which collects crime data, fraud incidents jumped from 3.2 million between April 2023 and March 2024 to 4.2 million between April 2024 and March 2025. It’s realistic to expect that at some point you’ll encounter a scam. If you end up losing money to a scam, contact your bank immediately using the number listed on your card. Below, we take a look at the most widespread scams of 2025. Deepfake calls Scam calls using artificial intelligence (AI) to create or manipulate the caller’s voice were big in 2024 and again in 2025. A survey commissioned by Hiya, a spam call protection company, revealed that a quarter of scam calls in the UK were powered by AI. Some of the most common versions of these scams included AI voices claiming they were from the police, bogus offers for phones and impersonations of bank staff and employees from HMRC and Amazon. Overall, phone scams were among the most prevalent types we saw reported in our scam sharer tool. Always treat unexpected calls with caution and try to verify the caller before taking any action. This is especially important if you’re asked for money, sensitive information or to log into an account. If you know the number, you can search for it on Who Called Me. You can report scam calls by texting the word ‘call’, followed by the phone number, to 7726. On WhatsApp, tap ‘report’ after selecting ‘i’ next to the number in your call log. Health scam ads An investigation for Which? Tech (June 2025) looked at how dodgy adverts promoting dubious health products are rife on social media. Adverts making blatant false medical claims, impersonating real doctors and pretending to be endorsed by medical bodies aimed to con potential victims out of money. Adverts we discovered this year were peddling made-up prostate treatments, dodgy diabetes devices, an oscillating positive expiratory pressure (OPEP) device for people with breathing difficulties, slimming patches, fake diet pills and bee-venom cream. If you come across an advert on social media promoting a health product, you can see whether the images in the advert have been used elsewhere by using a reverse-image searching tool, such as TinEye or Google Image Search (click the ‘Search by image’ icon to the right of the Google search field). Always double-check any endorsements made on adverts and use a tool such as who.is to look up the website’s details – a recent registration could be a sign of a scam website. You can check whether a product or medicine is officially approved by the Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency. Account hacking A year of headline-making high-profile data breaches could make you worry about the vulnerability of your personal information. Access to your online accounts can be gold dust to a fraudster – impersonating you enables them to target your contacts. We saw this play out when a victim of a personal Facebook account hack contacted us. He believed it happened after his device was infected with malware. The hacker then linked the victim’s Facebook account to their own Instagram account. We often hear about how incredibly challenging to regain access to a hacked account. Make sure you set up two-factor or multi-factor authentication Never click links in suspicious messages, as these could lead to malware being installed onto your device or being redirected to a phishing site. Instead, navigate directly to the site or app to log in. Task scams 'I was offered a job on TikTok' ‘The scammer contacted me on TikTok with an offer to earn £2 per video for watching content on the platform.' Wendy told Which? Initially, she earned a few hundred pounds by completing these tasks before being told that there were VIP tasks available, which would require £20 to £40 to release, but would see her earnings jump to £200 to £995. After she’d sent almost £2,000, the scammer cut off all communication. Even though her account on the platform used to facilitate the scam showed a balance of £2,681, she was unable to access or withdraw the money. Task scams are a type of job scam that lure you in with the promise of high earnings in return for remote, simple work that requires no experience. They include everything that could sound appealing to those looking for an easy income. Scammers typically contact ‘recruits’ via WhatsApp, Telegram or social media. We’ve even seen impersonations of real recruitment agents, making the scam seem quite convincing. The task will be easy, such as rating movies, mystery shopping, liking social media posts or completing survey questions, all in return for money. Eventually, you’ll be asked to pay the scammer to release tasks where you can earn more money, but you’ll never actually be able to retrieve these earnings or get your money back. Some people rack up huge losses from this scam. In a poll carried out on the Which? Scam Action and Alerts Facebook group, where members share their experiences of scams, one in eight respondents had been targeted by a task scam. Unexpected messages from so-called recruiters should be avoided. If you’re offered a job without applying for it or having an interview, you’re most likely being scammed. Also be wary if the job sounds too good to be true, with high salaries in return for very easy work. At no point should you be asked to pay any money. This scam is all about making up reviews to places you have never been to but provide good feedback for companies. This last one I have sat down with a resident who had been scammed by the fraudster with this scam. | 
