Tabla de contenidos para 648 en Computeractive

When I moved house in 2021, the list of things to arrange at my new address seemed endless: broadband, postal redirection, electricity, water, council tax, TV licence and so on. But never did it occur to me to set up a new landline. I was happy to leave that behind. Soon we won’t have much choice in the matter. By the end of 2025, BT will have completed its great Copper Switch Off, forcing us to use internet phone services. I know many of you have grave concerns about this, so we’ve tried to put your minds at ease in our Cover Feature. We start by answering the main questions, then reveal your options for switching to full-fibre broadband. We also explain how to get online using 4G and 5G…

KEEP TABLETS IN HAND LUGGAGE You’ll no longer need to remove laptops and tablets from hand luggage when walking through airport scanners from June 2024. The Government said new “cutting-edge” systems will give security staff more detailed images of what people are carrying. Read more at www.snipca.com/44512. APPLE’S ‘EMERGENCY SOS’ COMES TO UK Apple has launched its Emergency SOS service in the UK, letting you contact emergency services via satellite when there’s no mobile or Wi-Fi coverage. However, it’s only available on the latest iPhone 14 models, released in September, that have iOS 16.1 installed. You can now also share your location with others by satellite in the Find My app (www.snipca.com/44514). Visit Apple’s site for details: www.snipca.com/44513.…

In early December, I received two scam texts in quick succession both claiming to be from Santander. The first, which asked me to tap a link to confirm a new payee, was followed a day later by a message asking me to investigate suspicious activity. I’ve been a Santander customer for many years and know how to manage my online account, so I knew these messages were fake. The scams were fairly amateurish, with URLs that didn’t even mention Santander, and had loads of hyphens. That said, they would seem unnerving to those who aren’t aware of how scammers work. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Back in Issue 638, we said we were concerned by how long it would take Acer to send a replacement tablet stylus (pictured) to reader Andy Chandler. It turns out we were right to be worried, because Acer never got around to sending one, and in the end has refunded the £50 he spent buying it. Acer’s customer service has been appalling. In November 2021, Andy bought a stylus to work with his Acer Chromebook. When it stopped working soon after the purchase, Acer said it wasn’t compatible with the laptop – which, as Andy pointed out, was a “ridiculous” claim because it had worked for a while. Back in August, Acer then changed its mind and said the stylus wasn’t covered by Andy’s warranty. That’s when Andy got in…

FILE MANAGER Files 2.4 www.snipca.com/44503 What you need: Windows 10 or 11 Microsoft has finally added tabs to File Explorer in Windows 11, but the feature has long been offered by this fantastic open-source file manager. Files may have a hard-to-Google name, but it’s packed with useful options you won’t find in File Explorer and the latest update adds even more. Files already benefits from a simple, modern interface and version 2.4 lets you tailor it to your needs by changing the default layout. Click the Layout button on the toolbar and choose your preferred style, such as Details (which tells you the date your files were last modified as well as their type and size), Tiles (which displays thumbnail icons for each file) and Adaptive (which adjusts the layout…

Barry Collins puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and software trying to trick you Google’s app-developer policy states right there, in big bold lettering on the first page: “Apps that are deceptive, malicious, or intended to abuse or misuse any network, device, or personal data are strictly prohibited.” So if someone at Google can explain to me how Android app Wifi Password Hacker – which claims to “hack and break any wifi password” (see screenshot 1) – was ever allowed into its Play Store, I’d be much obliged. It claims it can unlock any Wi-Fi network, giving you free access to lots of lovely bandwidth wherever you may be. In reality, it’s about as likely to break into Wi-Fi networks as I am to break into Buckingham Palace…

WEBCAM | £35 from Box www.snipca.com/44357 Taiwanese company Verbatim is best known for storage products, but it’s recently ventured into the webcam market. The AWC-02 is a 1080p model with a built-in light source, which is there to help improve picture quality, particularly if it’s positioned in a dark corner or there are light sources behind you putting you in silhouette. The camera uses autofocus to keep faces sharp and detailed, and it works well as long as you sit reasonably still. Move around or reach for a pen, and the webcam will focus on something else, which can be distracting during calls. Image quality is fine, but there’s a definite graininess – even with the built-in light on – while its colours are a tad oversaturated. The built-in light…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2021 Back Issue CD: £17 from www.snipca.com/42077 LAPTOP Acer Swift 3 14in £999 from www.snipca.com/44367 Tested Issue 648 Comes with a powerful 12th-generation Intel processor and 1TB SSD to make Windows tasks feel incredibly fast. Also has a decent 2560x1440-pixel IPS screen and comes with plenty of ports, including two Thunderbolt 4-compatible USB-C. ALTERNATIVE Lenovo Yoga 6 Gen 7 Also has a fast processor, long battery life and plenty of ports, but not as cheap as it once was. £783 from www.snipca.com/42509 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 £649 from www.snipca.com/42211 Tested Issue 634 Samsung has replaced its own Tab S7+ to become our favourite Android tablet. It’s fast with a stunning 11in screen, and has a longer battery life…

Proton Drive Free* Android www.snipca.com/44395 iOS www.snipca.com/44396 Privacy-focused company Proton has launched mobile apps for its online storage service, Drive. Upload files and folders from your phone or tablet, access items offline and create secure links to share with other people, with all data encrypted on your device. You get 500MB of storage for free. Proton Calendar Free* Android www.snipca.com/44393 iOS www.snipca.com/44392 Now available on iOS (the Android app was released last April), Proton Calendar lets you create a private schedule that - unlike Google Calendar - is free of ads, trackers and data sharing. Your calendar is end-to-end encrypted and you can switch between a daily or monthly agenda, and light or dark mode. Puma Free Android www.snipca.com/44398 iOS www.snipca.com/44399 Sportswear brand Puma has updated its app with an…

LIBREOFFICE CALC & MICROSOFT EXCEL Work out years, months and days between two dates The =DATEDIF function is a versatile tool for calculating how much time has passed between two dates. You can join together (or concatenate) three =DATEDIF functions to present the length of time in years, months and days. Once you’ve added the two dates, click inside the cell you want the first result to appear (D1 in our case – see screenshot). You now need to type the following command =DATEDIF(A1, B1 "y") &" years, “&DATEDIF(A1, B1, "ym") &” months, " &DATEDIF(A1, B1, "md") &" days" – or copy and paste it from our Pastebin site: www.snipca.com/44461. Replace A1, B1 with the cells containing the first set of start and end dates on your spreadsheet. Press Enter,…

It’s nearly the end of the line for the UK’s telephone network. By December 2025, the ageing copper cables that let us make and receive phone calls at home will be permanently retired. In what BT is calling the Copper Switch Off, all analogue landlines will be replaced with digital ones, which means you’ll need an internet connection to make calls. ISPs that previously charged for line rental have already stopped offering phone services to new customers and those renewing their contracts, which means that from 2023 onwards you won’t be able to sign up for a traditional landline. Although we’ve covered this subject in our news section, many people still don’t realise that their landline will be disconnected at the end of 2025. Recent research by Uswitch found that…

When your internet provider moves you to its own VoIP service before the Copper Switch Off, you should be able to keep your landline number without any problems. But if you decide to switch to VoIP with another company, the process might not be as straightforward. This is because your ISP may treat the request to transfer – or ‘port’ – your number as a request to cancel your service, which means you could lose your broadband connection as well as your landline. For this reason, it’s wise to let the VoIP provider handle the porting process for you – it may take several weeks and you may be charged, but at least you won’t be left without internet while you wait. Also remember that if you’re still in contract…

What’s the threat? Look out for a fresh batch of scams containing attachments that claim to be a confirmation of an eBay order you’ve placed. Such scams are normally blocked by spam filters, but we received several in quick succession in mid-December, suggesting the criminals behind them have found a way to bypass the blocks. The email itself says that ‘Your recent order is now confirmed with us’, and quotes an eight-digit Customer ID number. The order form quotes a ‘PayID’ order confirmation number (1 in our screenshot), and is addressed to your email address (eg, ‘Dear john.smith@gmail.com’). One of our supposed orders was for an Acer Ultra Slim i7 laptop, which we apparently paid £449.95 for 2. The key to the scam is a phone number at the top…

On 24 November, I purchased a new Canon printer – the TS9551C model (£209.99 from www.snipca.com/44342), which came with setup cartridges. Unfortunately, they are not the same cartridges as the ones I use in my Canon MG7150 printer (£125 from www.snipca.com/44343), which has served me well for a number of years and is still functioning, ready to be passed on to someone who needs it. On the evening of the 24th I decided to contact Cartridge Save (www.cartridgesave.co.uk), who I’ve used for several years, to order cartridges for my new printer. I requested standard delivery, and they arrived the following morning via DPD. I’d like to give a big shout out to Cartridge Save for their exceptional service, yet again. They’ve never let me down, but on this occasion their…

NordLocker Personal www.snipca.com/44511 Price: £6.79 a month or £29.88 a year Free trial: N/A What you need: Windows 10 or 11, or macOS Protecting your files against loss, theft and corruption is no easy task – do you trust them to an online-storage service such as Google Drive or OneDrive, or encrypt them on your PC using a specialist tool such as VeraCrypt? NordLocker offers the best of both worlds by securing your sensitive data in encrypted ‘lockers’, which can be stored locally and synced in the ‘cloud’. This allows you to access your files from anywhere through the NordLocker website and its desktop and mobile apps, and share items with other people. To get started with NordLocker, download its free Windows app and create an account – you don’t…

WHAT THEY SAY Adobe’s 2022 Creative Trends www.snipca.com/44386 “With 46% of Gen Z saying they are anxious and stressed, there is a need for the visual effect of Psychic Waves which includes calming gradients full of vibrant colours. This new trend is focused on creative authenticity as an outlet for expression, including escaping reality, through psychedelic gradients, vibrant colours and aesthetics that imply blurred vision.” WHAT THEY MEAN Pretentious drivel like this shows we have no problem escaping from reality.…

PC | £1,399 from PCSpecialist www.snipca.com/44332 There’s a double whammy of exciting new components in this PC, and they both come courtesy of Intel. For starters, it’s built around the Intel Core i5-13600KF processor. If you know your Intel product codes, you’ll have spotted that the ‘13’ immediately after the hyphen means this is one of the company’s 13th-generation processors. It’s the first time we’ve seen it appear in a desktop PC that’s affordable enough to make it worth considering. The other eye-catching Intel component is the Intel Arc A770 graphics card. PCSpecialist likes it so much it’s incorporated it into the name of the PC. This isn’t graphics hardware that’s built into the processor, as with Intel Iris Xe graphics, but a dedicated card that can help your PC…

Urbanista Phoenix are the world’s first solar-powered earphones, with a streamlined self-charging case integrated with Powerfoyle™ solar cell material. Using advanced green technology, the earphones continuously recharge when stored in the case and exposed to any light, whether natural or artificial. They’re completely wireless and lightweight, freeing you from charging cables. They have hybrid active noise-cancelling technology and noise-reducing microphones to filter out ambient sounds. You’ll enjoy music and crystal-clear calls even in crowded spaces. They work with Bluetooth 5.2 and come with three sizes of silicone tip. To enter this competition, answer the question at www.snipca.com/44484 and submit your details. It runs until midnight Tuesday 17 January. Good luck! You can buy the Urbanista Phoenix earphones from www.snipca.com/44486, priced £139. They’re available in midnight black and desert rose. For more…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Save full-screen screenshots to a specific folder I was flicking through old issues of Computeractive recently and in Issue 567 I came across a tip from reader Barry Williamson encouraging us to use PicPick (https://picpick.app) to take scrolling screenshots, so it captures your entire screen. I’ve not had to use PicPick for this task because I use the superb Chrome extension GoFullPage (www.snipca.com/44376) instead. It’s easy to use – just click its camera icon in the toolbar (1 in our screenshot). One of its most useful tools is telling it to download screenshots to a specific sub-folder that you can name. Right-click the camera icon, click Options, then give this new folder a name 2 in the Directory box under the Download heading. When you next…

Recipe Filter Chromium www.snipca.com/44360 Firefox www.snipca.com/44366 When you need the recipe for a particular dish, there are loads of food blogs and websites that can help you. The trouble is that the actual recipe is often buried far down the page, after the writer explains why they like this meal, when they first made it and other contextual content that makes the article more valuable to Google. Recipe Filter cuts through this waffle to provide only the details you need. It detects when you’re viewing a recipe and displays an overlay containing just the ingredients, instructions and nutritional information. The extension preserves the formatting and images of the original recipe as closely as possible, along with options to print and share it. You can disable Recipe Filter on sites where…

Sleep Cycle Free* Android www.snipca.com/44404 iOS www.snipca.com/44405 This app tracks your sleeping habits to determine whether you’re getting enough quality kip. Sleep Cycle will wake you with a gentle alarm when you enter a light sleep phase in the morning and lets you track your sleep data over time. Upgrade to Premium to unlock extra features including sound recording. Best For Analysing your sleep habits Breathwrk Free* Android www.snipca.com/44402 iOS www.snipca.com/44403 Named one of Google’s best apps of 2022, Breathwrk offers breathing exercises and daily classes to reduce anxiety, relax your muscles and help you sleep. Follow its instructions to inhale, exhale and hold your breath for different lengths of time. Try the lung tests, and tailor the app to suit your needs and lifestyle. Best For Mastering breathing techniques…

Hold long video meetings for free Zoom (https://zoom.us) became essential for clubs during the Covid lockdowns as a way of holding video meetings, but it’s always come with a catch: the free version restricts you to 40 minutes and 100 people. If you want unlimited time and more people, you have to pay for a subscription, which costs from £119.90 a year per user (https://zoom.us/pricing). A free alternative is the excellent Jitsi Meet, which lets you hold meetings for an unlimited time with up to 500 people (its paid-for version, called 8x8 Meet, adds advanced options such as recording meetings). But what we really like about Jitsi Meet is that there’s no sign-up required or program to download. Simply visit https://meet.jit.si and click the blue ‘Start meeting’. It’s that simple.…

You don’t need to be a maths genius to work out that if full fibre will only be available to 85 per cent of homes by the time of the Copper Switch Off in December 2025 – assuming Openreach and other providers hit that target – that potentially leaves 15 per cent of the country without internet or phone services. Thankfully, this won’t be the case because it’s only the copper cables that run from telephone exchanges to street cabinets that are being replaced. The copper lines that connect cabinets to homes will remain live until residents have a full-fibre service, even after the switch-off. This means that if you have FTTC broadband, rather than FTTP, at the end of 2025, you won’t lose your internet or landline service. However,…

You might expect that moving from an analogue to a digital landline will make it as easy for spammers and scammers to contact you as they do via email, but this won’t necessarily be the case. BT’s Digital Voice system offers the same free Call Protect feature as its traditional phone service, which blocks known nuisance callers by sending them to your junk voicemail box, lets you add specific numbers to a personal blocklist and optionally blocks withheld, unknown and international numbers. You can also use a BT phone with call-blocking technology built in, though you may need to order a Digital Voice Adapter (www.snipca.com/44491). Sky’s Talk Shield call-screening service and TalkTalk’s CallSafe will similarly be migrated along with your phone number, so you can continue blocking unwanted callers. Vonage…

How can I download BleachBit? Q I want to install PC-cleaning program BleachBit (www.bleachbit.org), recommended as an alternative to CCleaner (Issue 633, page 60). My first attempt resulted in a PDF-conversion app. Then I seemed to download a driver-protection tool. My third and final attempt also tried to download an unrelated program. What’s going on? Peter Bassano A Unfortunately, the BleachBit homepage is awash with adverts that attempt to trick you into downloading software you don’t want – just look at the blue download button 1 and green Start button 2 in our screenshot below. Even if you click the correct link for downloading BleachBit (‘Windows’ under ‘Installation package’ 3) you’ll find yourself faced with a pop-up ad. It’s easy to assume that you need to click the arrow button…

Virgin Media and Sky were two of the best UK firms to haggle better deals with in 2022, according to a poll of 8,000 MoneySavingExpert members. Eighty-five per cent of respondents said they’d had a ‘success’ negotiating with Virgin, which came top of 10 firms spanning broadband and mobile, car breakdown cover and insurance. Sky came third with customers reporting an 84-per-cent success rate, far higher than the average of 66 per cent. TalkTalk, Three and O2 were also in the top 10, but there was no place for BT which had a success rate of 64 per cent. See the top 10 at www.snipca.com/44600 and full results at www.snipca.com/44601. Have you got a better deal by haggling? Let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk You’ll like this… You can hear a Martian…

WORLD CUP FINAL SETS GOOGLE RECORD Argentina’s victory over France in the World Cup final produced the highest search traffic in Google’s history. Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the record on Twitter (www.snipca.com/44550), saying “it was like the entire world was searching about one thing!”. Searching for terms related to Argentina’s win brings up fireworks in the team’s blue and white colours. NEW LENOVO MINI PC HAS 1TB SSD Lenovo has unveiled the latest mini PC in its IdeaCentre range (pictured below), available with 8GB or 16GB RAM and SSD storage up to 1TB. It has Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and Windows 11, while ports include four USB-A, two USB-C, and HDMI 2.1. It will cost $650, with UK pricing yet to be confirmed, and will go on sale in…

SKY EXTENDS SOCIAL TARIFF TO PHONES Sky is letting customers who sign up for its discounted ‘Basics’ broadband social tariff (www.snipca.com/44489) also use its equivalent mobile package for no extra cost. This gives you unlimited UK calls and texts and 3GB of data per month for 12 months, and normally costs around £7 a month. Sky Basics costs £20 a month for 18 months, with average speeds of 36Mbps. Read more at www.snipca.com/44488. PHILIPS UPGRADE TV SETS TO ANDROID 11 Philips is upgrading most of its smart TVs sold in 2019 and 2020 to Android 11. The TVs, which have model numbers ending in 04 and 05, came with Android 9 when launched. The update is called ‘TPM191E_R.201. 000.215.200’ and adds support for Google’s on-screen keyboard software Gboard. O2 OFFERS…

This isn’t so much a new tool as an existing one that’s closing. CyberGhost, which provides one of the best VPNs (see Issue 631, page 53), is closing the password manager it launched only as recently as April 2021. The service “didn’t gain the traction we expected”, which is CyberGhost’s euphemistic way of saying that hardly anybody used it. If you’re one of the few who did, you’ve got until 31 January to export your passwords as a CSV file and import to another service. CyberGhost says this can be done in “9 quick steps” by following the instructions at www.snipca.com/44477 (the fifth of these steps is shown in our screenshot). After that date, all the details stored in the password manager will be “deleted permanently”. CyberGhost isn’t the only…

LEAD CASE Will I lose cashback if I return faulty goods? Q I used TopCashback (www.topcashback.co.uk) to order a Samsung Galaxy Tab 8 (pictured) from Argos. It offered 10-per-cent cashback, and is showing that £52 is pending. If I have to return the tablet for any reason, faulty or otherwise, do I have to repay the cashback or is it taken off my refund? Molly O’Dwyer A That’s a very interesting question and one we had to ask TopCashback about. The company told us that Molly would get the £52 providing she met Argos’s criteria, which she appears to have done so far. However, the cashback is unlikely to be paid until the end of the retailer’s return-by date. Argos probably won’t authorise cashback over the Christmas period, so we…

Can I print my Kindle ebook? Q I recently purchased my first Kindle ebook, but I don’t like the experience of reading text on screen. Can I use a Kindle-to-PDF converter to print the book on paper? Ian Henderson A It ultimately depends whether your ebook is protected with DRM, which usually prevents it from being converted to other formats or read on devices other than a Kindle. Because you say you purchased the ebook, it’s highly likely it will have DRM limitations, but to find out download Calibre (www.snipca.com/44268 – click the Windows icon). During the installation, select the type of Kindle you’re using (if you’re not sure, opt for Kindle Basic), then connect your Kindle to your computer with a USB cable. Click ‘Device’ at the top of…

Cash, remember that? Babo Habiballa liked it so much he photocopied some and then used it to buy iPhones and PlayStations from victims he targeted on Facebook Marketplace. Alright, photocopied might be underplaying it. He was caught using “good quality” counterfeit notes to make fraudulent purchases worth £2,000. But the forgeries weren’t so good that they went unnoticed, and soon the police were on to him. Cops tried to stop his car after he pulled off another of his cons in March, but he ran two red lights and drove into oncoming traffic in a bid to escape. That getaway ended when he crashed his Vauxhall Nova into a tree. Habiballa clearly hadn’t played enough Grand Theft Auto on those PlayStations. He’s now doing 10 months inside.…

Win a Devolo Magic 2 WiFi 6 Reviewed: Issue 628, page 25 The Magic 2 Wi-Fi 6 is the world’s first Wi-Fi 6 Powerline adapter, designed to dramatically boost internet speeds in your home. It has 50 percent more power than any Wi-Fi 5 adapter, and uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) to make sure top speeds are available to every user. The adapter distributes internet signals using Powerline technology to deliver speeds of up to 2400Mbps. It turns any power socket into an access point for high-performance multi-room Wi-Fi. Multiple devolo Magic adapters automatically connect to each other to form a comprehensive Mesh network. It works with other adapters in devolo’s Magic series, and all devolo products have the most recent encryption standards (WPA2/WPA3) built in for complete…

What are they? The latest product announced by Dyson isn’t a vacuum cleaner but a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. These are no ordinary headphones. They also provide a stream of filtered, clean air straight to your nose and mouth. What do they do? Help combat noise and air pollution. Air is sucked in through the grilles on the headset, and has 99 per cent of pollutants removed. The clean air then passes through the detachable noncontact face covering. What’s the catch? They will be expensive. Final UK pricing will be announced closer to the March launch date, but we expect around £750. Also, you can listen to music for 50 hours on a single charge, but receive only four hours of clean air. So can I do without it? Yes,…

What you need: Amazon Fire tablet (2018 onwards) Time required: 30 minutes What do Duolingo, Gmail and Firefox have in common? Despite being among the most popular apps on Android and iOS, none of them can be downloaded through the Amazon Appstore. That could be a problem for Kindle Fire tablet owners, because it means they can only use them on their PC – or, in the case of Duolingo and Gmail, through the Fire’s built-in Silk browser. We’re big fans of the Fire tablet, which represents great value for money (the latest 8in HD version costs £100 from www.snipca.com/43849). However, these limitations might have been enough to stop us recommending the device. And it’s not only that the range of apps available via Amazon’s store is smaller than the…

BRAVE Follow your favourite sites in Brave News Brave 1.46, released at the start of December (www.snipca.com/44355), improves the browser’s Brave News feature, which displays news stories from popular websites in a feed on your New Tab page. Not only does your feed now include more content from UK sources, including the Guardian, Mail Online and BBC News, but you can also ‘follow’ your favourite sites by subscribing to their RSS feeds. Headlines for their latest stories will then appear in your news feed, letting you click through to the relevant sites to read the full articles. When you visit a website that has an RSS feed, you’ll see a new Manage Subscriptions button in Brave’s address bar (1 in our screenshot below). Click this and select Follow next to…

ANDROID & iOS Sign into Bitwarden without a password The brilliant free password manager Bitwarden has updated its mobile apps with a passwordless authentication feature. This allows you to log into your web vault from your phone or tablet without needing to enter a password. To use the new login method, install the Bitwarden app for Android (www.snipca.com/44389) or iOS (www.snipca.com/44391), if you don’t already have it, and sign in with your master password. Tap ‘Settings’ in the bottom-right corner of the app, choose ‘Approve login requests’ and turn on the option by selecting Yes. In your desktop browser, visit your Bitwarden web vault (https://vault.bitwarden.com), enter your email address if prompted and click the new ‘Log in with device’ option. This will send a notification to your phone or tablet…

WINDOWS 11 Drag windows to open new Snap layouts menu The 22H2 update of Windows 11, released in September, lets you open the Snap layouts menu by dragging a window to the top of your screen. When you do so, you’ll see a box of options showing where you can drop your window. The section you’ve chosen will turn blue – in our screenshot below it’s the left-hand side of the desktop. Also new is the Windows key+Z keyboard shortcut, which brings up the layouts menu showing the numbers you need to press on your keyboard to select each section of your screen. WINDOWS 10 Increase volume by scrolling your mouse wheel In Issue 645’s Make Windows Better we revealed how the Windows 11 22H2 update lets you change the…

Research by cybersecurity company Check Point last October found that courier firm DHL is the company most likely to be imitated by scammers, accounting for 22 per cent of all phishing attempts worldwide (www.snipca.com/44501). Microsoft is in second place with 16 per cent, while LinkedIn is third with 11 per cent of scams. Other companies in the top 10 include Google, Netflix, WeTransfer and HSBC. Fraudsters prioritise companies with global recognition to maximise their chance of success, but UK-specific scams are also on the rise. These include a new TV Licensing scam, which urges you to “Setup a new direct debit” (note the spelling mistake) or your details will be passed to a debt-collection agency (note the threatening tone). You can read TV Licensing’s advice on avoiding and reporting phishing…