A MAN is warning county residents to be aware of a sophisticated scam where fraudsters try to convince victims they are from BT.

Rob Allen wrote a social media post warning he had nearly been caught out by the scam as it had appeared legitimate.

Writing on the Warndon Villages Community Group Mr Allen said: “I was nearly caught by a phone scam so I thought I’d write up how it worked so that you can learn from my mistakes.

"To confirm he was legit, he said he was emailing me a pin number which I received. This email came from BT’s mail servers, so I gave it to him and he confirmed my account number and amount of my last bill to me.

"He then talked about the security of BT Web Protect, and BT Parent Controls.”

Mr Allen said he became suspicious when he was asked to download from anydesk - software that allows someone to take over the computer - so hung up. Mr Allen said after contacting BT he discovered it had been a genuine PIN email, but using a PIN number for a lost password reset request.

“So the scammer used that to log into my account and gave me the correct account number, and amount of my last bill because he was logged into my account," he said.

“Fortunately I got an SMS from BT when he changed the password, so I immediately reset it again.

“I didn’t lose anything and of course it’s entirely my fault that it got this far.

"It’s easy to go with the flow on a call when the other end says ‘you’ll get a PIN from me’ and then you get a totally legitimate one.

"Moral of the story - if they call you, hang up and call them back on the number from the website.”

A BT spokesman said: “We will never call or email a customer to ask for remote access to their computer, or ask for personal information (including bank details) unexpectedly.

"If a customer is suspicious, or uncomfortable about what’s being asked, we always recommend that they hang up the phone and call the customer service number of the company that is supposedly calling.

"If a customer thinks they may have fallen victim to a scam, they should report it to Action Fraud.

"We take our customers’ security very seriously and proactively warn them to be on their guard against scams. Our BT call centre colleagues are trained to help customers who receive scam calls and we have a specialist team to support customers who may have given their account details to criminals.”