Every year, students in the UK are scammed by criminals trying to steal money, and/or financial and personal details.
Criminals often use publicly available information to impersonate trusted organisations like the Student Loans Company to try and get confidential information from you. This information is then used to sign into your accounts, steal information and money.
Anyone can be affected by a scam at any time. If it happens to you, it’s not your fault. Report it and seek help as soon as you can.
Here’s some useful information to help to spot scams and protect yourself.
What scams do criminals use?
- Phishing is normally done via email. It aims to trick you into giving out your personal details or asks you to click on unknown links
- Smishing is done via text message to request data or ask you to click on unknown links.
- Vishing is done over the phone. Criminals pretend to be a person or business and try to get you to provide your personal details.
- Targeting students to become money mules. This is where you let someone else use your bank account to send money into.
How do I spot scams and protect myself?
- Often emails are sent in bulk. Be wary of emails without any personalisation or ones that are addressed to ‘Dear student’.
- Check the quality of the communication - look for poor spelling and grammar.
- If you’ve been contacted by an organisation, check the email address is valid by searching online first.
- Look out for communications that include a sense of urgency by asking you to reply in a set timeframe, for example if you do not act immediately your account may be closed.
- Be cautious of unexpected communications around the time you’re due your student loan payment.
- Don’t share personal information or news of receiving your student loan online.
- Avoid logging into your bank or student finance account on public networks or computers.
- Don’t feel pressured into giving any information on unexpected phone calls. You can hang up at any time. You can find the correct number and call the organisation back yourself to check if it was genuine.
- Be suspicious of job adverts that offer the chance to earn quick and easy money. Always stick to reputable job sites.
- Don’t share bank and personal details with anyone you don’t know or trust – even among friends or family.
Reporting a scam
If you think you’ve been a victim of or witnessed a scam, report it to the police through Action Fraud as soon as you can.
You can report activity you suspect as money muling by contacting your local police, the HMRC Fraud Hotline, or CrimeStoppers by calling 0800 555 111.
If criminals have already got your personal information report it to Action Fraud National Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting Centre on 0300 123 204.
Resources
Scams: how you can avoid them - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Information about money mules via the national crime agency
Scam awareness on Blackbullion
These tools and courses are provided by Blackbullion. You can use them for free - just sign in with your Hallam email address.
