Out of frustration, I decided to spend some time writing this article in the hope that it might reach people and help them avoid becoming victims of cyber‑crime.
I’m going to highlight cyber criminals’ techniques based on what has happened to me over the last few months. I thought I was cyber‑security savvy, but you’d be surprised at the tricks criminals can use to disguise themselves as electronic wolves in sheep’s clothing. Let’s start with some figures from the British Government’s National Cyber Security Centre:
‘As of December 2025, the number of reports stands at more than 49.8M. This has resulted in 240k scams removed across 426k URLs.’
I started being targeted in December 2025 by mystery phone calls. For the first couple of times, I received a call from an Edinburgh code number. I’d answer, there would be a brief silence, then the call would be cut by the caller. Not long after, I’d get a call from a Glasgow prefix, the same silence and no message. Another came from a Manchester prefix, then another from a London prefix.
What concerned me was that if this was a scammer, surely they would want to get me into conversation in order to attempt to extort money from me. Was it possibly a stalker?
What the caller was able to obtain without saying anything was confirmation that I would be awake at that time. Perhaps background noise could be noted, allowing the caller to build up some kind of ‘profile’. What I observed was that the caller tended to ring at the same time, usually (but not always) around 11am in the morning or about 5pm in the evening – never late at night or very early. To me this suggested the caller also had a routine, perhaps even a day job.
On one occasion I blocked an incoming call from Manchester ending in 1783. The next day I received another call from Manchester, and the phone number was identical except the final digits ended in 1784.
At that point I knew something suspicious was going on. These criminals use what are known in the trade as ‘sock puppets’ – fake or disposable identities created to disguise their real ones.
A sock puppet can be a fake phone number attached to your phone through an app. You can also use an app to create a one‑time‑only email address which a criminal can use once, then discard, leaving the address to be recycled for someone else waiting in the queue.
The scammer may have realised I was on to them, so they decided to send me an email, and this is where I let my guard down.
I received the following email:
Thinking this was a genuine new client enquiry, I suspected nothing and replied asking what they wanted.
I received a response.
From the second email I realised that the surname was spelled slightly differently and that the emails came from different addresses. My guess is that they were using more sock puppets.
The content of the message was so badly written that either the scammer had not properly thought through how to continue the fraud, or they were demonstrating that although I had blocked their calls, they could still reach me in other ways. The English quite clearly showed that the sender was no Charles Dickens.
Both scam emails were forwarded to the British Government’s phishing department in the hope they might be able to prevent this cyber criminal from targeting the elderly or vulnerable.
Around the same time, I tried to do some trade on a popular freelancing site for creatives. I placed some adverts and very quickly received enquiries, which was surprising as my ads had only been live for a day. I was savvy enough to notice that instead of asking whether I’d be interested in doing some work, they asked me to click on a link so that I could ‘review’ their ‘proposals’. Such a Trojan technique could have opened my laptop to a whole soup of malware and viruses.
I received three of these cyber traps. They were reported to the site administrators, who blocked the senders for me.
It’s easy to become worried or anxious about the cyber criminals out there, but you can find many resources online to help you protect your data, your bank account and your life.
As for me, I simply take criminal actions against me and convert them into free content.
If you have received any suspicious emails, or if you have been a victim of fraud in the UK, you can contact:
http://www.reportfraud.police.uk
Tel: 0300 123 2040
Send your suspicious emails to: report@phishing.gov.uk
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