UK phone scam briefing: the evidence and your next steps

What the published evidence actually shows

UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2026 records £1.28 billion lost to payment fraud during 2025. Its authorised push payment figure was £576.4 million: money people were manipulated into sending themselves. These figures cover payment fraud across channels. They are not a count of scam calls, and the smaller figure is already included in the larger total. UK Finance publication and reporting period; fraud breakdown.

Ofcom separately reported that 40% of UK mobile users had received at least one suspicious mobile message in the previous three months in its 2026 research. A suspicious message is not necessarily confirmed fraud, and this survey measure cannot be added to banking losses. Ofcom’s July 2026 announcement.

Our interpretation is practical: a caller report can help you recognise a story, but the decision to send money or share access needs an independent check. Neither a national statistic nor a single website rating can settle whether the person currently on the phone is genuine.

Three requests that deserve a pause

“Move your money to keep it safe.” A caller may claim to be investigating fraud and ask you to transfer your balance. Your bank or the police will not ask you to move money to a safe account. Read our bank impersonation briefing before following any payment instructions. NatWest’s impersonation guidance.

“There is a job for you; pay this fee first.” Recruitment fraud can involve a convincing vacancy followed by charges for equipment, checks or arrangements that never materialise. Verify the vacancy through the employer’s independently located contact details. Our WhatsApp job scam briefing explains the checks. Report Fraud’s recruitment guidance.

“Install this so we can fix the problem.” Remote access can expose account information or allow someone to act on your device. An unexpected request to install software during a banking call is a reason to end it and contact the bank yourself. NatWest’s remote-access guidance.

How to get useful information from a number report

Start with the description, not just the label. Does it explain what was said, what the caller wanted and whether money, information or device access was requested? Compare that with your own experience. A detailed account of a payment request tells you more than an unexplained “scam” label.

Keep four distinctions in mind:

• Reports are accounts of experiences. They are not a recording or independent verification of the call.
• A count is not a call total. One person can describe repeated calls; other people may never report theirs.
• Recent is not proven. Dates help establish when something was reported, not who made the call.
• The displayed number is not confirmed ownership. Caller ID can imitate an unrelated number. Ofcom on caller display and spoofing.

An empty result means we do not have enough published evidence. It is not a safety certificate. If a page contains conflicting reports, verify the organisation independently instead of choosing whichever comment feels most reassuring.

Choose the next step for your situation

These routes have different purposes. A network report can help a provider investigate; a police report records suspected fraud; a community report helps other readers. Posting here does not contact your bank or the police. Ofcom’s action guide; Report Fraud.

What makes your own report useful

Describe the call in a way another recipient can compare with their own. A useful structure is: what happened, what was claimed, what was requested and what you did. Distinguish the organisation the caller claimed to represent from an identity you independently verified.

For example, an illustrative report could say: “The caller claimed to be from my bank and asked me to move money to another account. I ended the call and contacted my bank through its app.” This example is invented to demonstrate useful wording; it is not a report about a real number.

Leave out account numbers, passwords, one-time codes, addresses and other people’s private details. Keep detailed evidence privately for your bank or the police. Use our reporting policy and community guidelines when contributing.

How this briefing was prepared

This is an editorial briefing published on 31 October 2026. It brings together the linked primary publications and our explanation of how to read community evidence. The statistics are explicitly attributed to their publishers and retain their original reporting periods. They are not Who’s Calling Me submission totals, a Q3 2026 platform analysis, or a live national risk score.

The examples are teaching examples, not additional incidents. We have not inferred the identity of callers from number prefixes, estimated unreported calls or used another lookup site’s data as our own. Any future report based on this platform’s submissions needs its own date range, inclusion rules, treatment of imported records and explanation of missing data.

Source links were checked on 31 October 2026. This page uses AI-assisted drafting; its sources and reasoning are visible for readers to inspect. Suggest a correction if a link, reporting route or factual statement needs updating.