Phone networks admit they cannot stop scam text epidemic

After she had paid the fee, she received a call from a number that showed up on her phone as being from Lloyds Bank.

She said: “The lady on the phone was very sweet and told me that someone had been using my account. She had me transfer every penny I had into a ‘safe account’ in my name, which I know retrospectively was incredibly stupid, but by the time I realised it was too late.”

After she contacted Lloyds she was eventually reimbursed around £1,150, which was all the fraudsters had left in the account.

She said: “Lloyds said there was no insurance for bank transfers and there was no way they could refund me the remaining £3,860. I broke down into tears.”

Ms Lahiri has now filed a complaint over Lloyds’ handling of the case with the Financial Ombudsman Service. Royal Mail said it would send email and text notifications to customers only if the sender had requested them for trackable parcels. Lloyds said it was investigating the case.

Peter Henderson, 63, from London, who initially lost £3,000 to a text scam before his bank refunded him his bank, said: “It was a horrible experience. One gets angry and emotional while it goes on, and this affects your judgment.”

A vicious circle keeps the technology in use, said Mr De Vere. Companies and government use it, so phone companies and manufacturers support it, which means companies and government can use it.

Vodafone, O2 and EE, three of the biggest mobile operators, would answer questions only through their lobby group Mobile UK and declined to say how they were individually tackling scams. The network Three did not respond to requests for comment.

Mobile UK said the industry had put in place measures to combat fraud. It said it had helped launch a programme last year called SMS Sender ID, which protects certain government and brand names from being misused and helps share data on scam texts. But it admitted that there was currently no way to filter spam in the way email providers have been able to do for decades.

The industry encourages customers to flag suspicious texts themselves, but Mobile UK refused to say how many had been reported.