Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: Holly Willoughby, This Morning, Money
Claire Reid
Holly Willoughby has urged people to be vigilant to scams after almost falling for one herself.
The This Morning host appeared alongside co-star Phillip Schofield and scam expert Alexis Conran who was explaining to viewers how to spot potential scams this Black Friday.
On the show, Alexis explained that certain types of scam are more common this type of year, including the fake delivery text.
Advert
The 41-year-old said: “The fake delivery text - this is what I was saying to you, I had the same thing and absolutely fell for it. At a certain point I then went, ‘no this doesn’t look right’ but it caught me, for sure.”
Alexis then showed off a typical re-delivery text scam, which tells the recipient they need to pay a few quid to rearrange it. With so many of us picking up bargains in the Black Friday sales, not to mention it being Christmas next month, plenty of people would look at this and assume it’s for a legitimate package and pay the small fee.
However, this is only half of the scam - because those who do willingly hand over the bank details to pay for the ‘re-delivery’ will then get a call a few days later from someone pretending to be from their bank, as Alexis explained.
He said: “As we said before, this is the beginning of a much bigger scam.
"You pay £2.99, get a phone call two weeks down the line from people pretending they're your bank and they say, 'remember that text message that you answered? That's a scam and now we need to move all your money to a [supposedly] safe account.' And, that's how they get all your money so beware."
Holly has spoken previously about almost falling foul to fraudsters - just last month while talking with Alexis, she revealed: “The amount of times we talk about it and I did it the other day. It was a text about a delivery that needed re-delivering. And I thought, ''Oh yeah, I probably do need to pay the re-delivery'.
"It was only when I clicked and saw you had to enter your bank details and I thought, 'Oh my god, don't do it' and deleted it. Even though we talk about it all the time."
When asked what it was that made her twig that it was a scam, she explained: "The moment I saw bank details I though, 'Oh ok, I get this.'"