Cash stolen by scammers hijacking UK social media accounts rises 400% | Scams

The entire quantity stolen by criminals who hack into individuals’s emails and social media accounts after which fake to be them has risen by greater than 400% in a yr, official UK knowledge exhibits.

In lots of instances, the scammers are hijacking individuals’s accounts with a purpose to use their identification to promote faux occasion tickets – comparable to to sold-out gigs – to unsuspecting family and friends.

The entire reported quantity stolen through e-mail and social media account hacking reached £6.3m within the 2025-26 monetary yr, in contrast with £1.2m in 2024-25, based on the Report Fraud service run by the Metropolis of London police, which holds nationwide accountability for financial crime.

Nonetheless, the true complete could also be a lot increased as many rip-off victims don’t report the crime, actually because they really feel embarrassed, and typically as a result of the person sum of money concerned was comparatively small.

The Guardian beforehand featured the case of a music fan whose Instagram account was focused by hackers, who used her identification to promote tickets to an Oasis gig and stole £1,400 from her mates. She mentioned the hackers impersonated her so nicely that her family and friends genuinely thought they have been talking to her.

Others have been scammed by fraudulent WhatsApp and textual content messages by which a legal pretends to be their baby or a relative who’s in an emergency state of affairs and urgently wants money. This has been dubbed the “Hello mum” rip-off.

Information from Santander has proven that amongst prospects of the financial institution, fraudsters pretending to be somebody’s son have been probably the most profitable at extracting money, adopted by daughters.

Ch Supt Amanda Wolf, head of Report Fraud operations, mentioned: “For most individuals, being hacked isn’t only a cyber concern – it’s private. It may well go away victims locked out of vital accounts, anxious about what data has been accessed, and anxious that criminals could use their identification to focus on others.”

She added that what begins with one compromised account “can shortly affect household, mates and colleagues as fraudsters exploit trusted relationships to commit additional fraud”.

Report Fraud is launching an consciousness marketing campaign urging the general public to guard their on-line accounts from hackers by switching to passkeys the place they’re accessible. A passkey makes use of a person’s gadget and biometrics to authenticate them and can’t be hacked like a password.