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Reporting Suspicious Emails

When you receive an email which doesn’t look right what do you do? In the past we’ve shared advice such as:

• Don’t assume that an email is from your bank or financial institution and remember that financial providers will never ask you for confidential information in an unsolicited text, email or phone call.

• Don’t click on a link, especially one which takes you to a log-in page. Instead, go independently to the website and log in directly from there.

The temptation might then be to instantly delete suspicious emails but there is one thing you can do first which could help to stop fraud. That action is to report suspicious emails to the Suspicious email Reporting Service by forwarding the email to report@phishing.gov.uk.

In 2023 more than eleven million such reports were made, a rise of 44% on the previous year. As a result, the National Cyber Security Centre were able to close down more than 329,000 malicious websites. A further 60,000 malicious websites were identified and closed down thanks to people reporting scam texts by forwarding them from their mobile phones to ‘7726.’ Scam calls can also be reported in the same way by texting the word CALL followed by the scam caller’s number to ‘7726.’ 

More information on steps which individuals can take to identify and prevent scams can be found on the Action Fraud website:  https://www.actionfraud.police.uk