Impersonation fraud shot up by 84% in the first half of 2020, with almost 15,000 reports and £58m lost, according to UK Finance. Her bank eventually agreed to refund the money but other victims of remote access fraud have been told their banks will not cover losses if they give access to their devices. One of the worst cases we came across resulted in a Which? member losing £80,000 after a 'BT engineer' phoned about service problems in the area. Scammers posing as IT departments, telecoms providers and banks are tricking victims into relinquishing control of their devices to hack into their accounts and steal sensitive data.