Black Friday and Christmas shopping scam warning issued by cops and spy chiefs after £15million nicked last year

With the costs of living biting, we want to protect everyone from being scammed this Christmas.

Sadly, thousands of people were, last year – losing on average one thousand pounds each to fraud as they shopped online over the festive period.

They were duped by criminals posing as genuine sellers on popular online marketplaces. These fraudsters were offering deals on tech, cars and designer gear which proved too good to be true.

As we approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when many Sun readers will be tightening their belts, we know fraudsters will have bargain-hunting shoppers in their sights.

This is why, today, the organisations we lead: National Cyber Security Centre, National Crime Agency and the City of London Police (through Action Fraud) are launching a campaign to help keep online shoppers more secure in the run up to Christmas.

While we are doing all we can to prevent attacks getting through – 2.1 million cyber attacks were stopped in their tracks last year – and taking action to pursue and disrupt offenders and bring them to justice, still too many people get scammed.

But the good news is that huge numbers of these can be prevented by being cyber aware and taking some practical steps when you shop online: protect your accounts, check before you buy and pay securely.

And, if you see what you think is a scam email, text or website then report them.

Last year the British public made 6.5 million reports to the suspicious email reporting service (SERS), and as a result we removed 62,000 scam websites, helping others from being conned.

At this difficult time, let’s work together to stop the cyber grinches from stealing Christmas this year.