Lauren Deitz

Which? is warning about fake 'government' emails related to the Emergency Alerts test that took place on 7 September. The worryingly convincingemails appear to come from ‘Government Digital Services’ and recipients may be easily tricked into clicking a malicious link to complete a survey about the recent test. It’s a common tactic for scammers to hijack a big news event, so it’s no surprise that we’re seeing scams off the back of the recent Emergency Alerts test.

After a 30-hour journey, Judy and Richard Loader arrived in Phuket, Thailand, to find that their villa – booked via Booking.com – didn’t exist. Judy had booked the villa for more than £4,000 for a long-awaited Christmas-time holiday with their children and grandchildren. But when they arrived at the address, there was no sign of it. The family soon realised that the listing was a scam, and they were faced with the prospect of having nowhere to stay just a few days before Christmas.

Dear Which?, Recently, on Google, I found a cloned website that looked like the genuine travel firm lastminute.com. I was completely taken in and booked a trip to New York through the scam website, paying my deposit on my Mastercard. The scammers then called me posing as Mastercard and convinced me to grant them remote access to my phone. They deleted my firewall, scanned bank cards from my phone and spent thousands of pounds before the fraud department put a block on my cards.