More than £190,000 a day is lost in the UK by victims of cyber-crime, according to police statistics.

Action Fraud is the reporting centre for people scammed, defrauded or who experienced cyber crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and they say that £34.6m was reported to be stolen from victims in 6 months in 2018, a 24% increase on the previous six months.

The figures show 13,357 people in the UK reported cyber crimes over six months and more than 5,000 of those people were hacked via their social media and email accounts.

Commander Karen Baxter said cyber criminals were targeting people’s social media accounts “in a bid to make money and steal personal details”.

“Always be suspicious of unsolicited requests for your personal or financial information and never call numbers or follow links provided in unsolicited texts or emails,” she said.

Action Fraud reported a current TV licence email scam which has led to more than 5,000 complaints over a three-month period.

Emails with headlines such as “correct your licensing information” contain links to a fake TV licensing website where customers payment details, including their account number, sort code, and card verification value (CVV) code are stolen for the criminals use.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-wasters do let me know, by email.