Which? Scam Alerts: the biggest scams of the past five years
Cast yourself back to March 2020, when the world was very different. Before lockdown even began, opportunistic scammers were pulling out all the stops to catch out innocent people, leading Action Fraud to warn that coronavirus-related fraud - such as nasty shopping scams peddling PPE and hand sanitiser - fuelled a 400% increase in scam reports.
In response to this worrying trend, Which? launched a free Scam Alerts newsletter service to report on the latest scams and share advice on spotting, avoiding, reporting and recovering from them.
In just five years of free Which? Scam Alerts, we've warned about hundreds of scams and helped our Scam Alert subscribers avoid an estimated £5.5m in scam losses*.
We now share our insights with almost half a million subscribers. If you’re one of them, then thank you for joining the fight back against the scammers. Please share the Scam Alert service with your family and friends to help them stay one step ahead of the scammers.
Here, we look back at some of the biggest scams we’ve reported on since 2020.
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2020: NHS impersonations and endless shopping scams
Scammers love to seize a news opportunity to add an air of credibility to their communications. In 2020, we saw countless examples of fake Covid jab offers, NHS impersonation texts and emails, and plenty of dodgy offers for medical supplies.
The Covid jab and NHS scams typically started as a text message and claimed you needed to book a Covid jab. Once the recipient had engaged with the message by clicking the link, the scammer would gather personal and financial information. This would then lead to a bank impersonation scam.
Covid also forced our shopping habits, and so scammers flooded the internet with fake retail sites. In April 2020, the National Cyber Security Centre reported that it had removed 471 fake online shops selling Covid-related items. These scams typically involved victims buying things that simply never turned up.
- Read more: ‘I lost £5k to an NHS scam’
2021: Delivery text scams and bank impersonation scams
Delivery text scams were rife in 2021, with scammers capitalising on the continued demand for online shopping and delivery. These scams involve various claims that you’ve missed a parcel, underpaid for postage or have incomplete address information. These scammers phished for details in the hope they could do further damage by infecting your device with malware or gain enough information to con you at a later date.
In a similar format to the fake NHS texts, many of these dodgy delivery texts led to bank impersonation scams. With information gathered from phishing links in text messages, these scammers could sound incredibly convincing.
2022: ‘Hi Mum and Dad’ WhatsApp scam and energy impersonation scams
As the cost of living crisis started to bite, it was no surprise that scammers saw yet another opportunity to catch people out. The UK’s energy crisis deepened and we saw scammers impersonating many of the big energy companies to offer refunds and grants - all examples were attempts to steal your details.
As households adjusted to sharp increases in bills, scammers also found success in impersonating adult children on WhatsApp and appealing to their parents for money to pay a bill or fix a broken phone. Which? was first made aware of these scams in late 2021, but 2022 saw a steep rise in cases being reported to Which?.
2023: The rise of QR code scams
Since 2023, reports of QR code scams have rapidly increased. QR codes are the black-and-white squares that you can scan with a smartphone to send you to a website. The technology has been around for years, and scammers find them a useful means of disguising a dodgy link. The link could expose you to malware or sign you up for a subscription trap.
These scams began to appear as stickers on parking payment machines to con you into using a fake website. More recently, they’ve appeared on restaurant menus and packages. It can be hard to tell if a QR code is genuine, so always vet the website it's sending you to before you click through. Inspect the link by clicking on additional settings within the scanner, or you could turn off internet access for your device (put it on airplane mode) and open the link to view the address details first.
2024: Parking fine scams and celebrity AI scams
Text message scams continued to plague our devices in 2024, this time with claims of outstanding parking fines. While it may not sound convincing to some, if you’ve been caught off-guard or if you’ve had a recent parking problem, then these messages can cause just enough panic to get you to follow the instruction to click on a link and share your details. In many examples, we also saw copycat government websites.
2024 also saw an incredibly convincing new wave of celebrity impersonation scams using artificial intelligence (AI). Using free (and cheap) AI tech, scammers can create convincing footage and images of celebs endorsing and peddling all manner of goods and services - from fake crypto offers to Le Creuset giveaways.
- Listen to our podcast: we expose a global AI celebrity scam network
2025: Sim-swap and purchase scams thrive
In January, we shared our warning about Sim-swap fraud and why scammers want your phone number. This scam is proving to be popular and it’s no surprise - scammers are hijacking phone numbers to steal bank security codes and access your social media. With access to your accounts, they can carry out all kinds of damage. We first investigated this scam in 2020, but have seen an increase in reports in 2024 and 2025.
Our top tip is to secure your mobile account by asking your network provider for additional security measures, such as a Pin or password to be used to approve any account changes in-store or over the phone.
As we look ahead to see what’s likely for the rest of the year, purchase scams and dodgy online shopping scams will continue to thrive. Already, millions have been lost to these scams this year - Santander recently reported that in just the first few months of the year, almost £3.5m had been lost to purchase scams by its customers. We advise that you always double-check an offer that seems too good to be true, especially if it's time-limited and rushing you to purchase. Always look at reviews across a few platforms before you buy and watch out for websites that are missing vital information about returns, contact details, location and T&Cs.
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* Estimate based on Which? Scam Alert annual subscriber surveys between 2021 and 2024, n=4,270.
