What New Scams Should You Watch Out For Now?
Scams have always been a numbers game, but the ones landing in my inbox right now are sharper than anything from a couple of years back. AI tools have made it cheap and easy for criminals to write convincing messages, clone voices, and build fake websites that look identical to the real thing. The volume hasn't dropped either, it's just got harder to spot the fakes among everything else competing for your attention.
I hear about new scams from clients and readers most weeks, and while the underlying ideas rarely change, the execution keeps getting sharper. So I want to walk through what I'm actually seeing land right now, why it's catching people who'd normally spot a scam a mile off, and the handful of habits that still work regardless of how convincing the fake has become.
The Three Scam Types I'm Seeing the Most Right Now
Right now the ones cropping up again and again are delivery scams, a fake missed parcel text with a link to pay a small redelivery fee, impersonation scams, someone posing as your bank, HMRC, or even a family member in trouble, and investment scams promising unrealistic returns, often pushed through social media ads or direct messages. None of these are new ideas, but the execution has got noticeably slicker, and the targeting has got more personal, sometimes referencing a detail a stranger shouldn't have any way of knowing, like the name of a courier you've genuinely used before or a family member's actual first name pulled from a public profile.
Why AI Has Changed the Playing Field
The gap between a lazy, obviously-fake scam and a genuinely convincing one used to take real skill and time to close. AI has collapsed that gap almost completely. A scammer can now generate a passable impersonation of your bank's tone of voice, or a voice clone of someone you know, in minutes rather than days. I've covered the fuller picture of how AI is changing things on both sides of this fight if you want to go deeper into it, but the short version is that the old advice about spotting clumsy wording or broken logos matters far less than it used to. I've had messages read out to me by clients that I genuinely couldn't have called fake from the wording alone, and the only reliable tell left was where the link actually pointed.
Nobody Is Too Careful to Be a Target Anymore
There's a lingering assumption that scams mostly catch out older, less tech savvy people. That's out of date, and I say this as someone who talks to a wide range of people about it every week. I've seen students lose money to fake job offers that asked for an upfront "training fee," young professionals caught out by convincing "your account has been compromised" texts that mimicked their bank's exact template, and small business owners targeted by invoice fraud that looked exactly like a message from a real, existing supplier. Anyone with an email address and a phone is a target now, regardless of age or how careful they think they are. If anything, the people who assume they're too switched on to be caught are sometimes the easiest targets, because that confidence makes them less likely to pause and check.
The Habits That Still Work Even as the Scams Get Slicker
The advice hasn't really changed even though the scams have. Slow down before clicking anything that feels urgent, that pressure is almost always manufactured. Verify unexpected requests for money or information through a separate channel, call the company back on a number you already know and trust, never reply to the text or email itself. Keep your accounts protected with two factor authentication everywhere it's offered, and a proper password manager like NordPass so a single leaked password can't cascade into every account you own. If you're regularly on public wifi, a service like NordVPN adds a genuinely useful extra layer between you and anyone else on that network. None of these habits are complicated or expensive, which is exactly why I keep repeating them, they work quietly in the background rather than requiring constant vigilance.
What I Do the Moment I Spot One
If I come across a scam, whether it's aimed at me directly or I just spot one doing the rounds among people I know, I report it. Report Fraud is the place to do that in the UK, and it genuinely helps build the wider picture that stops the next wave from landing in someone else's inbox. Most email providers also have a dedicated report button that feeds straight into their own filtering, so it's worth using both rather than just deleting and moving on. It costs a minute of your time and it means the next version of that same scam has a slightly harder job landing in someone else's inbox unnoticed.
Building the Habit That Keeps You Ahead
None of this requires becoming paranoid or treating every message as a threat. It just means building the pause into your routine before you act on anything urgent, and keeping the basics like two factor authentication and a password manager switched on so a single mistake doesn't cascade into something worse. If you want a second opinion on anything that's landed in your inbox looking dodgy, my free Safety Toolkit has the tools I recommend and use myself, and you're always welcome to get in touch with me directly if something feels off.
I also share printable checklists and quick safety tips as pins, so follow me on Pinterest too.
The five signs I check for on any new scam
The scams change every few months. The tricks behind them barely do. The NCSC, the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, lists five signs that a message may be a scam, and I use the same five on everything that lands in my inbox or my texts.
Authority, urgency and emotion
Authority means the sender claims to be someone official, such as a bank, a doctor or a government department. Urgency means you're pushed to act in a very short time, often with a threat of a fine or some other consequence. Emotion means the message is trying to make you panic, feel afraid, hopeful or curious. A fake parcel text hits all three at once.
Scarcity and current events
Scarcity offers something in short supply to play on your fear of missing out. Current events means the message latches on to the news, a big event or a seasonal deadline so it feels relevant right now. When a message uses two or three of these together, I treat it as a scam until proven otherwise.
What to do when one of the signs shows up
Stop, and break contact. If you're unsure, contact the organisation yourself using details from its official website, not the ones in the message. The NCSC also points out that banks won't ask for personal information by email or ask you to confirm account details by phone. If a caller seems suspicious, hang up and ring the organisation directly. The full list is on the NCSC page on how to spot a scam email, text message or call.
New scams: quick answers
Where do I report a scam text or email?
Forward a scam text to 7726, which is free with most phone providers, and forward a suspicious email to [email protected]. If you've lost money, tell your bank and report it to Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk. I list every route in where to report a scam.
Do these signs still work against AI scams?
Yes, because they describe how a scam makes you feel, not how well it is written. A perfect message that creates panic and a tight deadline is still a warning. My simple checks I use to stop AI scams build on exactly that.
Do I need to keep up with every new scam?
No. Learn the five signs and the habit of checking through a channel you trust, and you will catch most new versions before you've even heard of them. If you want a place to start, the first things I do the moment I suspect a scam is a good next read.
Keep reading
This guide is part of Kells Security Solutions, where I explain online safety in plain English. Next, have a look at how to protect your family from AI voice clone scams or how to build a password worth trusting. If something has already gone wrong, here is where to report a scam in the UK.