Scammers are thriving on Meta's social media platforms

Platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram remain squarely at the centre of the UK’s scam epidemic, our survey of victims has shown. While the tech giants profit, consumers and their banks are paying the price for a relentless wave of fraud. 

Our latest flagship research maps the journey of modern scams in the UK. Which? surveyed 1,501 UK adults defrauded over the past two years, tracking how they were targeted and also the fight to recover their money. 

Unauthorised fraud was the most common type reported, with people having their bank account or card details harvested (44%), or losing their physical card, mobile phone or other device to opportunistic thieves (16%). 

The rest (35%) were impersonation scams, whereby victims are groomed by fraudsters masquerading as trusted organisations or individuals who dupe them into authorising payments.

Here we expose how criminals operate, why reimbursement remains a postcode lottery and why urgent reforms are needed to tackle this crime.

Victims mainly encounter fraud online

The internet is a happy hunting ground for criminal networks. At little cost or risk of getting caught, they can cast their nets wide, phishing for sensitive data, setting up countless fake profiles and creating copycat websites. 

An alarming 63% of fraud victims surveyed said the scam involved at least one app or website. 

The majority of online scams reported in our survey were spread through social media (55%), although criminals also abused online marketplaces such as eBay and Vinted (17%), ads or pop-ups on other websites or apps (12%), search engines (9%) and dating apps (4%). 

Meta-owned services were involved in most scams, with Facebook cited by 28% of authorised-fraud victims, WhatsApp by 17% and Instagram by 10%. 

A Meta spokesperson said: 'Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms and across the internet. We fight scams on and off our platforms because they're not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services.'

Less common were in-person approaches, such as doorstep scams and bogus letters or flyers. 

Unsolicited contact via messaging apps (8%), phone calls (6%) or texts (6%) remains uniquely dangerous. In these cases, 61% of fraudsters rely on number spoofing, faking caller ID to imitate trusted institutions such as banks and government agencies. 

You could even be targeted twice, first with a phishing message to steal your personal and financial details, and then with a fake phone call to coerce you into sharing the security codes they need to approve payments or link your card to a new digital wallet. 

Fake ‘missed parcel’ texts, one of the most prevalent tactics, are linked to organised crime networks using automated phishing kits to steal millions across the world.

• Find out more: How fake delivery texts fuel a fraud empire

Many victims don’t get their money back

Being scammed doesn’t always mean your money has gone forever. But reimbursement depends on how you paid, who you paid and which legal protections apply. 

In our survey, 57% got at least some of their money back, while 33% got nothing – and that rose to 44% among 25 to 34-year-olds. Some 57% of fraud victims had less than £500 stolen, while 17% lost between £1,000 and £25,000; a handful lost more than that. 

Victims scammed via Meta platforms struggled to recover their money. While 37% of victims targeted on Amazon recovered all their money, that figure dropped significantly to 21% for Facebook and 15% for WhatsApp. In fact, around half of those scammed on Meta platforms got nothing back (47% on Facebook and 53% on WhatsApp), compared to just 24% on Amazon and 21% of offline scams.

Banks must reimburse you quickly for unauthorised fraud, as long as you were not complicit in the fraud or unusually careless, known as ‘gross negligence’. If you are manipulated into making a payment yourself, your prospects are bleaker. 

While half (49%) of unauthorised fraud victims got a full refund, only 21% of authorised fraud victims did. 

How victims sent money to scammers

The mandatory authorised push payment (APP) fraud reimbursement scheme covers UK bank transfers up to £85,000. It excludes international transfers, card payments, crypto and gift cards. 

Sending money overseas via apps such as Wise or Remitly isn’t covered; however, you are protected if you use these platforms to make a domestic bank transfer, ie to a UK account.

When asked which payment methods were involved, 40% of authorised-fraud victims reported making a UK bank transfer, while 27% paid by credit or debit card and 24% used a cryptocurrency platform (2% could not remember). Age played a role in crypto-related scams, with millennials (31%) significantly more likely than gen Z (17%) or gen X (19%) to have transferred funds this way. 

• Find out more: The 'hybrid' payment scam that banks refuse to refund

‘Fraud fighters must join forces’

Chiara Cavaglieri, Which? fraud expert, says:

‘The fragmented approach to fraud prevention in the UK makes life far too easy for fraudsters. While they share tips and trade phishing kits, the organisations trying to stop them rarely work together so effectively.

‘A victim might click on a fake ad, visit a malicious website, exchange text messages with a fraudster, receive a convincing call from someone spoofing their bank, then be persuaded to transfer money to a crypto app. 

‘Yet the online platforms, telecoms providers and financial institutions involved each focus on only one stage of the scam. Shared intelligence, about suspicious accounts, websites and phone numbers, would prevent more scams. Consumers support this, too: 75% of fraud victims told us they were comfortable in principle with organisations sharing their information if it helps to protect others. 

‘The government’s new £31m cross-sector Online Crime Centre is encouraging but it may need more funding – the Social Market Foundation (SMF) has estimated that this requires a budget closer to £290m. 

‘We also think more pressure should be put on social media giants that profit from fraudulent advertising. Until all sectors share responsibility for preventing fraud and compensating victims, criminals will continue to thrive in the gaps between them.’

Which? surveyed 1,501 adults in the UK who had lost money to fraud in the past two years. Fieldwork was carried out online by Deltapoll on 1-12 June 2026 and the final data has been weighted to be representative of victims of fraud in the UK population (aged 18+).