Spotting a scammer: NIGEL'S EASY SAFEGUARDS

The psychologist loathes cyber predators almost as much as fame!

- Donna Fleming

Nigel Latta once tweeted about how a scammer had phoned him, claiming to be from Spark and saying there was a serious problem with his "faulty internet". The psychologist, author and TV presenter shared in hilarious detail about how he decided to wind up the fraudster.

When the scammer wanted to know if he had Windows on his computer, Nigel described every window in his house. When asked about the lights on his modem, he said there were green ones, red ones, orange ones, a disco light and a search light. "Is that normal?" he asked the conman. Eventually, after Nigel had rabbited on and on, the guy hung up on him.

His retelling of the conversation is extremely funny, but Nigel knows only too well that for many people, encounters with scammers are no laughing matter.

Nigel's hosting a new TV series called You've Been Scammed By Nigel Latta that looks at how scammers exploit our human weaknesses to con us out of money. The show was the idea of the Banking Ombudsman, who wanted to get more information out to the public about how to spot a scam.

Nigel - whose TV shows have covered subjects like true crime, parenting and money – always thought he was pretty savvy when it came to detecting dodgy emails, texts and calls.