A social experiment has shown that people are willing to give enough personal information to allow for identity fraud when offered money or something free.

During the experiment, some people gave up their names, date of birth, email address, bank account details and National Insurance number.

The experiment was conducted in conjunction with research on scams released by Santander today.

According to the data, one in four British people, that is 13 million, have been duped, with the average person losing more than £400. 

Two fifths of people who have been scammed say that at the time of the incident they felt as though something suspicious was going on but 17 per cent ignored their gut.

A further 15 per cent say they should have noticed something was wrong- but as we all know hindsight is a great thing.

The latest online figures show losses of almost £11 billion to the UK economy as a result of fraud.

London Stats: 

Think the bank they have their main current account with ask them to:

  • 26 per cent- reveal their pin, password or security numbers
  • 41 per cent- download security software
  • 24 per cent- transfer money out of your account for security reasons
  • 20 per cent- reply to an email with your personal or bank details
  • 21 per cent- for remote access to your computer to fix an issue with online banking


Had never heard of these common types of scams or had heard of it but didn’t know much about it:

  • 19 per cent - Telephone Scam (posing as bank/other org and pressuring into revealing details/moving money) 
  • 33 per cent - Buying & Selling Scam (posing as user of Ebay/Gumtree type sites, and not sending a purchase)
  • 45 per cent - Withdraw Cash Scam (pretend to be police, ask you to withdraw as ‘part of an investigation’)
  • 30 per cent - Remote Access Scam (asks for remote access to fix a computer but releases malware)
  • 37 per cent ‘Smishing’ Scam (sending texts asking to update details but with a fake telephone/website link)
  • 51 per cent Payment Redirection Scam (intercepting an email w/ suppliers and changing payment details)
  • 33 per cent Romance/Befriending Scam (starting a relationship of trust before requesting money be sent)
  • 42 per cent say they’ve personally been a victim of one of the above scams already.

The advice is never to disclose security details such as your card PIN, any password or security numbers and if you feel an offer is too good to be true, it may well be. 

Research was conducted for Santander by Opinium amongst a representative sample of 2,003 UK adults between 18th and 21st November.