Martin Lewis: Scams can happen to anyone! I nearly got caught by one yesterday

He said to cancel, he'd sent me a six-digit code to reply to. I was feeling rushed and pressured, as the team needed to record, but finally enough of my brain turned onto the call and alarm bells started.

I said I wanted to first check that this call was legit. He got pushy and said if I didn't send the code he wouldn't stop the iPhone being sent. This felt wrong to me... Why would he want to risk sending a high value item if the customer says it wasn't ordered?

So, while talking and prepping the podcast, I managed to search the telephone number and yes, it was a recognised 'Amazon scam number'. Clearly, had I replied with the code he'd sent, he would have then asked for further details and that would've started the data mine.

Of course, by answering (not something I normally do to unknown numbers, but did by reflex) I did inadvertently confirm that my number is a real one, so I'll have to cope with that. The real lesson here is how sophisticated and plausible it was.

And even though I'm obviously hyper-alert to scams as my face is in half of them, catch someone at the wrong time, when they're not paying attention, and anyone can be caught out!