Fake parcel texts are now the most common scam in Britain

Fake parcel delivery texts impersonating Royal Mail, DPD and Evri are now the most common scam in Britain, encountered by 63% of adults targeted by fraudsters in the past three months.

The figure comes from Virgin Media O2’s first Scam Index, a new quarterly snapshot of fraud activity in the UK, which found more than 18 million adults were targeted by scammers between April and June.

More than a third of people (36%) say they see at least one scam every week, and a third of those who lost money were left out of pocket, with victims reporting an average loss of more than £1,800.

One in five people (19%) have been told their personal information has appeared in a data breach, leaving them more exposed to future attacks.

Delivery scams topped the operator’s list of the ten most common frauds seen over the quarter, typically fake texts about held parcels, redelivery fees or tracking updates.

Online shopping scams followed at 58%, covering messages about orders never placed and fake websites where paid-for items never arrive, ahead of account suspension scams at 56%, which claim an Apple, PayPal, Netflix or Amazon account will be locked unless the recipient verifies their details.

Banking scams (49%), tech support scams (48%), fake prize draws (47%) and bogus HMRC messages (46%) rounded out the upper half of the table, with telecoms scams, impersonation of friends and family, and crypto schemes completing the top ten.

Virgin Media O2 said it has blocked more than 1.4 billion scam texts to date and flags almost 100 million suspicious calls to customers each month.

June was a record month for flagged calls, the highest in the operator’s history, and AI is making the problem worse. 63% of Brits believe AI has made scams more dangerous, and 58% of under-35s who saw a scam in the past three months reported deepfake content, hyper-realistic images, video or audio depicting people saying or doing things that never happened.

“We see first-hand how fraud is constantly changing and the devastating impact it can have on victims. With June a record month for suspicious calls, people should be on high alert,” said Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud Prevention at Virgin Media O2.

New rules incoming

The findings land as Ofcom finalises a package of rules forcing mobile providers to block, limit and disrupt scam messaging at source.

Fraud accounts for an estimated 45% of all reported crime in England and Wales, with £1.28 billion lost to criminals in 2025, and Office for National Statistics figures show fraud incidents have risen 30% since 2017 to an estimated 4.4 million a year.

Under the regulator’s new rules, mobile providers must block numbers used by scammers, detect and block malicious weblinks and phone numbers in transit, and set volume limits on pay-as-you-go SIM cards to stop criminals mass-texting victims.

Operators and aggregators handling business messages must run “Know Your Customer” checks on new senders and corroborate sender IDs against what they know about the business, so a company registered as a hairdresser cannot fire out parcel delivery texts.

Telecoms firms should also withhold the caller ID on international calls that appear to come from a UK mobile roaming abroad unless they can verify the number is genuine, a measure aimed at overseas gangs who “spoof” trusted UK numbers.

“Our new protections for consumers and businesses announced today will help ensure we remain one step ahead by disrupting and blocking this criminal activity at source,” said Amy Jordan, Ofcom’s Strategy Delivery Director.

Anyone can report a suspicious call or text by forwarding it to 7726, a free service available on every UK mobile network. Operators use the reports to trace and block numbers used by fraudsters and to spot new scam trends faster.

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