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Scary scams to watch out for in 2025: SMS 'blasters', ‘spear phishing’, tapjacking and deepfakes

A frightening new wave of scams are not only highly effective at defrauding people but also remain poorly understood. Here’s how these cons work and how to avoid falling victim.

Last year was another fruitful one for fraudsters.

According to a report from lawyers TLT, more than £1 billion was stolen from Brits in 2024, with a record 3.3 million fraud incidents.

These cons come in all sorts of different forms, and while some are well-known, there are also lesser-known variations.

In this article, we explore a handful of little-known scams that you need to be aware of.

Text 'blasters'

Sadly, a new scam seems to emerge every day, with text blasters, also known as SMS blasters, being one of the latest.

These devices allow criminals to send texts without requiring the victims’ numbers or being blocked by the phone networks’ anti-spam measures.

According to The Guardian, a fraudster in London recently drove around with a fake 2G mobile mast hidden in his boot, broadcasting scam texts to nearby phones and claiming to be from HMRC.

Luckily, the scammer was jailed for over a year after delivering messages to tens of thousands of unsuspecting people.

These scams are dangerous because they mimic trusted sources and play on people’s fears.

Quishing

Quishing is another scam modification of the original phishing tactic. 

The sneaky trick, though, is setting up fake QR codes, the codes that we scan with our phones, which have become so prevalent over the last few years.

Many of us have become accustomed to ordering in bars and restaurants via QR codes or even using them to get details for concert tickets and the like.

That’s where the scammers step up, creating dodgy QR codes that take you to fake websites designed to get you to share your details or sign up to costly subscription services without realising it. 

“Free stuff” packages

Another emerging scam for 2025 involves sending victims unsolicited parcels containing a QR code labelled “scan here to find out who sent this”.

The recipient may perhaps assume they have received a gift and wish to thank the sender.

When scanned, the code takes you to a phishing website to steal personal and financial information – sometimes even installing malware.

This trick not only scams your data but may also fake online reviews in your name.

The advice is unambiguous: do not scan QR codes from unknown parcels, and if you do, immediately check security on all your accounts.

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Jack Nicholson (Image: lovemoney - Getty Images)

Spear phishing

Phishing scams have been used by fraudsters for years, where you are messaged out of the blue by what appears to be a reputable business or organisation but is really the scammers themselves.

It’s very much a mass-market tactic, with these emails sent out to thousands of people at once, in the hope of a bite from a potential victim.

Spear phishing is a bit more targeted though, where scammers make use of personal information about you ‒ obtained from previous data breaches or information you’ve shared online ‒ to appear more convincing.

If the message appears to be more tailored towards you, or the person on the end of the phone can share some information like your actual account number, then there’s a better chance that you’ll believe it’s genuine.

Of course, legitimate firms and organisations don’t tend to call you out of the blue and expect you to share sensitive information, so any such request should set off alarm bells.

If you’re in any doubt about whether the call or email is legitimate, contact the business or organisation directly through numbers or addresses they publish on their actual website to check.

Tapjacking

Tapjacking is seriously sneaky. Essentially, you are shown an image on your phone, but it appears to be clickable. So, you tap away, trying to get rid of it or follow the instructions.

But underneath that image, there are clickable options, which you don’t necessarily realise are there, and which you are clicking away at.

As a result, you could be signing up to all sorts of different things, without realising it, simply because of the phoney overlay you’re being shown on your screen.

This is particularly common in shady gaming apps, where it’s used to con people into making purchases or signing up to subscriptions without realising it.

The best way to avoid this is to ensure you only use apps that you download via reputable stores such as Google Play or the App store.

It’s also important to do some research on those apps before adding them to your phone.

Deepfakes

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming far more commonplace, and that’s opening up opportunities for scammers. 

Which? reckons that scammers are increasingly making use of AI tools to spread misinformation, particularly through creating deepfake videos ‒ which use convincing alterations of genuine people ‒ to con potential victims.

For example, we have seen a host of scam videos using the likes of Martin Lewis to try and promote dodgy financial products.

With this technology still in its infancy, it’s all too easy to be caught out. So, before believing anything you see in these videos, be sure to do your own research and question how genuine it seems.

Scammers are adapting ‒ we have to as well

The sad reality is that scammers never rest on their laurels.

They are always looking for new methods, new ways of getting into our lives and separating us from our cash.

As a result, it’s important for all of us to be proactive in guarding against them.

By brushing up on the techniques con artists are employing, we are better placed to ensure that their attempts to con us will not be successful.

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