Scammers hit consumers with increasingly sophisticated ploys

A growing number of people are falling victim to consumer scams, including to increasingly sophisticated online “phishing” operations.

The National Consumer Agency yesterday urged consumers to be more vigilant after revealing that it received 835 scam-related queries in the past 12 months.

Of those, 44% were PC phishing scams, where the consumer was contacted directly by someone purporting to represent a company and advising them of a problem with their computer.