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The US has blacklisted seven Chinese groups it accuses of building supercomputers to help its military.

It is the first move by the Biden administration to make it harder for China to obtain US technology

On Thursday, three companies and four branches of China’s National Supercomputing Center were added to the US blacklist.

This bars American companies from exporting technology to the groups without proper approval.

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The US commerce department said the groups were involved in building supercomputers used by Chinese “military actors” and facilitating programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The sanctioned groups are leading China’s supercomputing development and are key players in Beijing’s plan for chip self-sufficiency.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the Biden administration would use “the full extent of its authorities to prevent China from leveraging US technologies to support these destabilising military modernisation efforts”.

The Trump administration had also targeted dozens of Chinese companies it suspected of using American technology for military uses, including phonemaker Huawei.

Mr Biden’s move on Thursday requires the seven Chinese groups to obtain licences to access American technologies, including chip infrastructures designed by Intel and other U.S chipmakers.

While the blacklist bars US-based companies from providing services and products to the Chinese firms, it doesn’t bar those that are produced in facilities outside of the US.

One such company is TSMC, the Taiwan-based company that has become the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturer.

What is a supercomputer?
Supercomputers have a considerably higher level of performance compared to a general-purpose computer and can make billions of calculations per second.

Supercomputers are made up of thousands of connected processors and are used for functions like forecasting weather and climate trends, simulating nuclear tests and for pharmaceutical research.

They are also necessary for the development of advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles.

“Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many – perhaps almost all – modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” Ms Raimondo added.

‘Not waiting around’
The US is worried about China gaining access to American technology that helps its army close the gap with the US military.

The Biden administration is currently reviewing dozens of China-related actions that Donald Trump took, including an order that prohibits Americans from investing in Chinese companies believed to be linked to the military.

“Do you think China is waiting around to invest in its digital infrastructure or research and development? I promise you, they are not waiting,” Mr Biden said in a speech on Wednesday.

Mr Biden said China and the rest of the world “are racing ahead of us in the investments they have in the future”.

US President Joe Biden has issued an order targeting homemade guns, known as “ghost guns” because they are unregistered and untraceable.

“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment,” he said on Thursday.

The president is enacting new measures through an executive order, meaning he does not need approval from Congress.

It includes efforts to set rules for certain guns, bolster background checks and support local violence prevention.

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However, the president will have an uphill task. The right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and many people see gun control laws as infringing on this constitutional right.

Hours after the president’s address, a gunman killed one person and injured five others at a cabinet-making shop in Bryan, Texas. A state trooper was also shot and injured while taking the suspect into custody.

On Wednesday, five people, including two young children, killed in South Carolina. The suspect has been named as former NFL player Phillip Adams.

This followed two mass shootings in March, which left a total of 18 people dead – one in Boulder, Colorado and the other in Atlanta, Georgia.

What did Mr Biden say?
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Mr Biden said 106 people are killed every day by guns in the country.

“This is an epidemic for God’s sake. And it has to stop,” he continued.

He also offered condolences to the family killed in South Carolina.

Mr Biden’s executive order gives the Justice Department 30 days to propose a rule that will help reduce the number of so-called “ghost guns”.

These guns are self-assembled, which means they do not contain a serial number and cannot be traced. Background checks are also not required to purchase the assembly kits.

“Anyone from a criminal to a terrorist can buy this kit and, in as little as 30 minutes, put together a weapon,” Mr Biden said.

Experts say that these homemade guns are increasingly being used in crimes. Over 40% of guns being seized in Los Angeles are ghost guns, according to federal firearms officials.

Mr Biden is also giving the Justice Department two months to come up with a rule on stabilising braces for pistols. Under the rule, a pistol used with a stabilising brace would be classified as a short-barrelled rifle, which requires much more stringent background checks under the National Firearms Act.

The Justice Department has also been asked to draft a “red flag law” which states can then use to create their own legislation. These laws authorise the courts and law enforcement to remove guns from people thought to be a risk to the community.

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Getting further gun measures through Congress would be difficult. The US Senate is currently split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice-President Harris holding the deciding vote.

However, current Senate rules mean that in practice, 60 votes are needed to pass legislation, meaning some Republican support is required. Republicans have blocked significant gun control laws in the past.

After recent mass shootings, gun-control activists called on Joe Biden to impose new regulations on firearms. And like past presidents who have sought to address US gun violence, Biden confronts a hard reality.

There are not enough votes in Congress to enact even modest new gun laws. And the steps a president can take unilaterally are limited in scope.

Biden promised that he would do something about gun control, however, so on Thursday he gathered a sympathetic audience in the Rose Garden and unveiled a grab-bag of new actions.

He nominated a head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – a vacancy Donald Trump never bothered to fill. He instructed his Justice Department to come up with new rules for homemade guns and more heavily regulate an attachment that makes handguns more accurate. He called for new gun-violence studies and draft legislation that states could pass.

In a tacit acknowledgement that the scope of these actions are limited, Biden assured his audience that “this is just a start”.

To go much farther, however, the political dynamic in Congress will have to change – and Biden, currently more focused on passing his infrastructure package, will have to expend more political capital.

Presentational grey line
What has the reaction been?
Mr Biden’s proposed measures have been praised by gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

“Each of these executive actions will start to address the epidemic of gun violence that has raged throughout the pandemic and begin to make good on President Biden’s promise to be the strongest gun safety president in history,” group president John Feinblatt said.

He added that the Biden administration’s decision to treat ghost guns “like the deadly weapons they are will undoubtedly save countless lives”.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the biggest gun rights lobby group in the US, described the measures as “extreme” and said it was ready to fight.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott labelled Mr Biden’s order as “a new liberal power grab to take away our guns”, promising not to allow this in his state.

Later on Thursday, Mr Abbott also tweeted that he had been working with public safety and law enforcement officials in the state over the shooting in Bryan. He promised any help needed to prosecute the suspect and offered prayers for the families of victims.

England and Wales’ contact tracing app will soon ask users to share details of venues they have checked in to, if they test positive for the coronavirus.

The update to the NHS Covid-19 app will be deployed ahead of shops reopening in both nations on 12 April, as well as outdoor hospitality in England.

The authorities will be able to use the information to tell other visitors if they need to be tested for the virus.

But the system has been designed to protect users’ anonymity.

“The app has been designed with user privacy in mind, so it tracks the virus not people, and uses the latest in data security technology to protect privacy,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Social Care.

Automatic checks
Until now, the QR barcode-scanning facility only came into use if local authorities themselves flagged a location as being a virus hotspot by other means.

This would then trigger a process whereby each phone could check if it had been at one of the affected venues on the dates concerned, and send the owner an alert.

But the facility has rarely been used, despite more than 106 million check-ins.

In March, Sky News reported that “capacity issues at a local level” were blamed for this, with overburdened health protection teams unclear about what they were supposed to do.

The decision to automate the system via users’ own actions could help address this.

People might have reservations about disclosing where they have been and when.

To address this, the Department of Health has said a “privacy-protecting” approach is being taken.

The app will only share venue history data if users opt in.

And rather than any names or other personal details being disclosed, the software will simply inform the system when an infected user had visited the locations.

Depending on the thresholds set – for example how many infected users visited the same place on the same day – other app users can then be told to either monitor their symptoms or immediately get a test, whether they feel ill or not.

It is not intended that the check-in tool be used alone to force others to self-isolate.

“People shouldn’t be worried about this as effectively they aren’t being asked where they were, but rather where an unidentified person testing positive with Covid was,” commented Prof Alan Woodward, a security expert from the University of Surrey.

Further details will be revealed in a forthcoming revision to the app’s data protection impact assessment (DPIA) document.

Centralised Scotland
Privacy advocates have, however, raised concerns about a parallel system being run in Scotland.

Users there are being asked to use a new app – Check In Scotland – to register at venues.

It is separate to the Protect Scotland contact-tracing app, and thus not bound to the same privacy-preserving measures demanded by Google and Apple, which provide some of the technology involved.

Check In Scotland uploads the name, email address and mobile phone number of each user to a “secure” centralised database along with the time of their visit to each venue.

The justification given is two-fold:

“a genuine concern” that users might delete their logs of visited venues prior to a warning being received
to allow Test and Protect workers to make direct contact with those judged to be at risk of contagion from sharing a venue with an infected person
Users are told the data should only be used to try to combat the virus.

But the DPIA acknowledges that the information could, in theory, be disclosed for other purposes if demanded via a court order or ministerial direction.

Some experts are concerned this leaves the door open to it being “misused”.

“The concern is that this infrastructure, once in place, is unlikely to go away because the coronavirus will be with us for a long time,” said Prof Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights at University College London.

A new regulator aiming to curb the dominance of tech giants has started work in the UK.

The Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will first look to create new codes of conduct for companies such as Facebook and Google and their relationship with content providers and advertisers.

The new unit will be based inside the Competition and Markets Authority.

The regime will be “unashamedly pro-competition”, said the business secretary.

The DMU’s first job will be to think about codes of conduct to govern the relationships between the tech firms and their users, whether that is small businesses wanting to advertise or news organisations looking to distribute their journalism.

Between them, Facebook, Google and Amazon control the lion’s share of digital advertising revenue.

Before taking action, the new regulator will have to wait for such codes to be put into law.

Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said: “Today is a major milestone on the path to creating the world’s most competitive online markets, with consumers, entrepreneurs and content publishers at their heart.”

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the pro-competition regime would “help curb the dominance of the tech giants”.

Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, added: “People shopping on the internet and sharing information online should be able to enjoy the choice, secure data and fair prices that come with a dynamic and competitive industry.”

A smartphone with a microscope camera offering 60x magnification has been revealed by Chinese phone-maker Oppo.

BBC Click’s Chris Fox went hands-on with the Oppo Find X3 Pro to see what the microscope could capture – and whether it was useful or just a gimmick.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has admitted that sanctions imposed on it by the US in 2019 have had a major impact on its mobile phone business.

The US took action amid claims that the company posed a security risk and last July, the UK said it would exclude the company from building its 5G network.

Growth elsewhere in the company meant that it did make a profit overall.

But chairman Ken Hu, referring to the impact of the sanctions, told the BBC: “It has caused a lot of damage to us.”

Mr Hu, speaking at the launch of Huawei’s 2020 report, called for a review of the global supply chain of critical technology.

Huawei has also tried to explain more about its ownership structure arguing that it will not allow interference from the Chinese state.

Mr Hu described 2020 as a year of challenges, with a significant hit to the mobile phone business and slowing revenue growth.

“Life was not easy for us,” he said.

Chinese strength
Strength in other sectors and in the Chinese market meant overall revenue was up 3.8% at $136.7bn (£99.3bn) and profits up by 3.2% at $9.9bn.

Mr Hu said restrictions had hurt US suppliers and global consumers as well as Huawei. “We think this is a very unfair situation,” he told the BBC at a press conference.

In response, the company has stockpiled chips, invested in research and development, and diversified its supplies.

It has also reportedly been developing its own chip production within China. Building domestic capacity for the most-advanced chips is currently a high priority for China.

There is currently a worldwide shortage of chips, and Mr Hu called for a “rethinking” and a “review” of the globalised semi-conductor supply chain.

US authorities have argued that using Huawei’s 5G equipment opens up countries to the possibilities of data being accessed by the Chinese state, or becoming vulnerable to being switched off.

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Huawei has defended its independence from the Chinese state by trying to explain its unusual model of ownership.

Jiang Xisheng, chief secretary of the board at Huawei, told the BBC that its employee-shareholders “will not allow external interference into the company’s operations”.

The company gave the BBC a remote video tour of the vault where more than 30 large cabinets contain records of the employees who own shares, listing when each individual bought them and for how much.

Critics have said the system is opaque, and is more of a profit-sharing scheme than a mechanism of real control.

Mr Jiang compared the model to the partnership model of UK department store John Lewis, arguing it means the interests of employees are closely bound up with those of the company and it shares in its success.

Ownership questions
Technically there are two owners of Huawei’s holding company – its founder Ren Zhengfei, who owns 0.9%, and a trade union body which owns the rest.

The company says the union is the platform for the more than 121,000 employees who own shares. These are not like normal shares, however. Non-Chinese staff are not allowed to own them and the shares cannot be publicly traded or kept when someone leaves.

Holding a share offers a chance to vote for the representative commission which is technically the highest authority in the company. Candidates come from within different sectors of the company, and staff can watch a recorded presentation before voting.

The process, Mr Jiang says, is competitive, although not as much as the US general election, he said when asked to compare it.

This commission selects the board of directors which report to it every year. Its reports have always been approved.

Mr Ren retains a veto over key issues, including candidates for the board of directors and a supervisory board. The model for this, Mr Jiang explains, is partly that of the British constitutional monarch. He says the veto is designed to be a “deterrent and constraint” rather than to be regularly exercised.

Mr Jiang joined the company in 1989, two years after it was founded, when it consisted of only about 40 staff.

He says the employee-ownership model came about to bring in capital as well as to attract and retain staff, and has allowed Huawei to focus on long-term research and development.

To try to emphasise the company’s openness, Mr Jiang picked up his phone during the interview to explain that all employees have an app on which they can post comments and ideas. He says that before our interview, he had seen one post that criticised him.Half of the 70 replies had backed the criticism and half had defended him, he said.

External critics, especially in the US, have argued that the representation committee is no more than a rubber-stamp and real power lies elsewhere, leaving the way open for hidden direction from the state.

That is an idea Mr Jiang seeks to dispel.

“For sure, we can say no to the state,” he told the BBC. “Even if some individual government officials wanted to intervene in our company’s operations we have the right to say no to that.”

‘Fake’ accounts claiming to be Amazon workers have been praising their working conditions on Twitter.

Votes are currently being counted in Alabama to decide whether Amazon warehouse workers will form a union.

But last night, a series of anti-union tweets were sent from accounts claiming to be staff.

Twitter has now suspended many of the accounts, and Amazon has confirmed at least one is fake.

Most of the accounts were made just a few days ago, often with only a few tweets, all related to Amazon.

“What bothers me most about unions is there’s no ability to opt out of dues,” one user under the handle @AmazonFCDarla tweeted, despite a state law in Alabama which prevents this.

“Amazon takes great care of me,” she added.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
Another account – which later changed its profile picture after it was revealed to be fake – said: “Unions are good for some companies, but I don’t want to have to shell out hundreds a month just for lawyers!”Amazon FC
Many of the accounts involved used the handle @AmazonFC followed by a first name.

Amazon has previously used this handle for its so-called Amazon Ambassadors – real employees who are paid by the firm to promote and defend it on Twitter.

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An Amazon spokesperson told the BBC that Darla was not an official Ambassador, but has not responded to the BBC’s request for clarification on several other accounts.

“It appears that this is a fake account that violates Twitter’s terms,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve asked Twitter to investigate and take appropriate action.”

Fake accounts
Several of the high-profile accounts have been suspended by Twitter. It told the BBC that Amazon Ambassadors are subject to Twitter’s rules on spam and platform manipulation.

Accounts which impersonate or falsely claim to be affiliated with a company, can be temporarily suspended or removed.

Any parody account should have a disclaimer in its Twitter bio, the company added.

It is unclear whether the accounts are real employees, bots or trolls pretending to be Amazon Ambassadors.

Amazon hits back
Amazon’s executives and its official accounts have been tweeting in defence of the company in recent days, after negative reports of poor working conditions, including staff having to urinate in bottles.

The official Amazon News account tweeted: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.

“The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.”

In response to a tweet by US Democrat senator Elizabeth Warren, which accused Amazon of “exploiting loopholes and tax havens”, the account said:

“You make the tax laws, we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means change them.

“Here are the facts: Amazon has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.”

Cyber-security companies are warning about the rise of so-called ‘extortionware’ where hackers embarrass victims into paying a ransom.

Experts say the trend towards ransoming sensitive private information could affect companies not just operationally but through reputation damage.

It comes as hackers bragged after discovering an IT Director’s secret porn collection.

The targeted US firm has not publicly acknowledged that it was hacked.

In its darknet blog post about the hack last month, the cyber-criminal gang named the IT director whose work computer allegedly contained the files.

It also posted a screen grab of the computer’s file library which included more than a dozen folders catalogued under the names of porn stars and porn websites.

The infamous hacker group wrote: “Thanks God for [named IT Director]. While he was [masturbating] we downloaded several hundred gigabytes of private information about his company’s customers. God bless his hairy palms, Amen!”

The blog post has been deleted in the last couple of weeks, which experts say usually implies that the extortion attempt worked and the hackers have been paid to restore data, and not publish any more details.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

The same hacker group is also currently trying to pressure another US utility company into paying a ransom, by posting an employee’s username and password for a members-only porn website.

‘The new norm’
Another ransomware group which also has a darknet website shows the use of similar tactics.

The relatively new gang has published private emails and pictures, and is calling directly for the mayor of a hacked municipality in the US to negotiate its ransom.

In another case, hackers claim to have found an email trail showing evidence of insurance fraud at a Canadian agriculture company.

Brett Callow, a threat analyst at cyber-security company Emsisoft, says the trend points to an evolution of ransomware hacking.

“This is the new norm. Hackers are now actually searching the data for information that can be weaponised. If they find anything that is incriminating or embarrassing, they’ll use it to leverage a larger pay-out. These incidents are no longer simply cyber-attacks about data, they are full-out extortion attempts.”

Another example of this was seen in December 2020, when the cosmetic surgery chain The Hospital Group was held to ransom with the threat of publication of ‘before and after’ images of patients.

Ransomware is evolving
Ransomware has evolved considerably since it first appeared decades ago.

Criminals used to operate alone, or in small teams, targeting individual internet users at random by booby-trapping websites and emails.

In the last few years, they’ve become more sophisticated, organised and ambitious.

Criminal gangs are estimated to be making tens of millions of dollars a year, by spending time and resources targeting and attacking large companies or public bodies for huge pay-outs, sometimes totalling millions of dollars.

Brett Callow has been following ransomware tactics for years, and says he saw another shift in methods in late 2019.

“It used to be the case that the data was just encrypted to disrupt a company, but then we started seeing it downloaded by the hackers themselves.

“It meant they could charge victims even more because the threat of selling the data on to others was strong.”

Tough to defend against
This latest trend of threatening to publicly damage an organisation or individual has particularly concerned experts because it is hard to defend against.

Keeping good backups of company data helps businesses to recover from crippling ransomware attacks, but that is not enough when the hackers use extortionware tactics.Cyber-security consultant Lisa Ventura said: “Employees should not be storing anything that could harm a firm reputationally on company servers. Training around this should be provided by organisations to all their staff.

“It’s a troubling shift in angle for the hackers because ransomware attacks are not only getting more frequent, they are also getting more sophisticated.

“By identifying factors such as reputational damage, it offers far more leverage to extort money from victims.”

A lack of victim reporting and a culture of cover-up makes estimating the overall financial cost of ransomware difficult.

Experts at Emsisoft estimate that ransomware incidents in 2020 cost as much as $170bn (£123bn) in ransom payments, downtime and disruption.

A firm that has the registered details of more than nine million chipped pets across the UK has been accused of losing its customers’ data.

Petlog is requesting that all users create a new account, but is not explaining why they need to do so.

One dog owner told the BBC he had logged on and received the details of someone else with the same name, including a phone number and address.

Petlog told the BBC pet information was safe.

In a statement the firm said: “We reassure all customers that their pets are safely on our microchip database.

“There are some customers who may be unable to immediately view their pets’ details when they set up their new online account, but this is because we are committed to protecting their data, and we want to verify details, in some cases, before we continue the online set up process.

“This is no way affects the reunification process, in the event of a pet going missing and the data is still safely on our microchipping database, which can be accessed 24/7 by our authorised network.”

David Plant contacted the BBC after he saw messages on a Facebook group suggesting that Petlog had lost customer data and needed everyone to re-register.

He went on the website and typed his name in – but instead of being matched to his springer spaniel, Sally, he was provided with the details of another man with the same name, and his dog, Max. The details included the address and mobile phone number.

“This seems like a massive breach of GDPR (data-protection regulations),” Mr Plant told the BBC. “In theory I could register his dog to my address and claim him as mine.”

He said numerous messages and calls to Petlog had gone unanswered.

Another said the situation was creating “chaos for pet owners”.

“Probably thousands of pets with microchips inserted are no longer registered, leaving owners unable to be reunited with stolen or lost pets and are completely unaware of this,” Chris Boston told the BBC.

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Professor of law at Newcastle University, Lilian Edwards, believes what has happened represents a breach of GDPR rules that should have been reported to the information commissioner’s office (ICO).

“It sounds like a massive database issue and [it] obviously contained personal data, so it is a breach and they should have notified the Information Commissioner’s Office within three days,” she said.

“They are not handling it very well and that is surprising because people are very attached to their pets.”

The ICO said it had no record of such a breach, although it said that not all such incidents needed to be reported.

Petlog said that it had found no evidence of a GDPR breach.

One BBC reporter checked the details of their cat, Smudge, on the database and was unable to re-register its chip.

The site said: “Your pet’s details have not been lost. We just need to clean up some of your data first.”

The Petlog website added: “Our online services and website have been upgraded to ensure the database is secure. All data has been safely and securely migrated. As you may not have added your details to the database in the first instance, some of our security questions may not immediately match.”

Missing dogs
In the FAQ section, Petlog explained that for some customers with new details, such as a different email address, the process would take longer.

“Customers can fill in the ‘can’t see my pet’ form within their online account so the system can match their record and their new details with their pet’s record,” it said.

The firm added: “We understand this might be concerning, but we can give our reassurance that all pets are still safely on our microchip database and in the event of a pet going missing, reunification [sic] won’t be affected.”

But on its Facebook page, people disputed this.

“Two dogs found on M6 and couldn’t have their microchips details passed on as they weren’t on the system,” wrote one.

Many others said they had had difficulties re-registering, with some saying they no longer had a record of their pet’s chip ID.

“This is a complete and utter disgrace,” wrote one customer on Petlog’s Facebook group, asking why she had found out about the issues on social media.

“Petlog should have immediately contacted all customers directly to speed up correction of this dire cock-up.”

Kate Bevan, editor of Which? Computing magazine and a cat owner, said: “It’s concerning to discover that Petlog has apparently failed to keep track of the personal information of its customers and of the details of their beloved pets.

“All organisations are required by law to protect user information. Petlog must resolve the problems as a matter of urgency.”

Pet theft soars
Twitter account Missing Pets GB urged all owners to check their accounts immediately.

Petlog is managed by the UK Kennel Club, which in January issued a statement apologising for issues arising from the “implementation of our new database”.

At the time, chief executive Mark Beazley blamed the switchover to a new system for a range of problems and delays that customers were experiencing.

“I give you my assurance that we will resolve the remaining customer-service issues and offer further online improvements,” he said at the time.

Pet ownership has rocketed during the Covid pandemic, with UK households buying 3.2 million pets since it began, according to the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association.

Pet theft has also increased during lockdowns, prompting campaigners to urge the government to introduce tougher penalties for the crime.

Phone companies must do more to stop fraudsters who spoof phone numbers to trap victims. one of the UK’s top law enforcement officers has said.

Graeme Biggar, director general of the National Crime Agency’s National Economic Crime Centre, says the UK needs “a step change in our response” to fraud.

It costs the economy up to £190bn each year.

Phone companies say they are committed to taking action over nuisance calls.

Mr Biggar says there has been an “explosion” in the number of criminals spoofing phone numbers in the past 12 months.

“Phone companies have been used for fraud since they’ve been invented and it’s a constant arms race to stop vulnerabilities and then stop them.

“With HMRC scams alone, more than 2,700 numbers have been taken out of circulation after they’ve been reported, but there is definitely a lot more that the phone companies need to do and can do.”

His comments are backed up by a recent report from industry body UK Finance, which suggests the number of reported cases of impersonation fraud – including spoof calls – last year nearly doubled to 40,000.

However, the real figure is likely to be much higher, because many victims won’t report fraud to their bank or building society, or even tell their family or friends, because of feelings of embarrassment or guilt.

Earlier this year, the level of fraud in the UK was labelled a “threat to national security”.

What is number spoofing?
The communications watchdog, Ofcom, describes number spoofing as people who deliberately change the telephone number and the name that is relayed as the Caller ID information.

“They do this to either hide their identity or to try to mimic the number of a real company or person who has nothing to do with the real caller,” explains Ofcom on its website.

“For example, identity thieves who want to steal sensitive information such as your bank account or login details, sometimes use spoofing to pretend they’re calling from your bank or credit card company.”

Ope Oladejo, a 21-year-old law student, had nearly £2,000 stolen from her last summer – money she’d been saving whilst working as a carer for help pay for a law course.

“The number spoofing was the most important part [of the deception],” she tells the BBC.

“At first I was a bit sceptical…but they said: ‘Check the number [we’re calling you on] on the back of your card’.

“I checked and it matched and that’s when I let my guard down completely.”

Because the criminals had convinced Ope she was speaking to her bank, they were able to get key details and information from her, which allowed them to steal the money.

Thankfully, the money was refunded by Ope’s bank and she has been able to continue her studies, but she says the incident hit her hard.

“Emotionally it just made me really sad, I just cried a lot about it,” she says.

“Financially I think it made me smarter… I basically ignore any phone calls I’ve not got saved as they might be a spoof.”

The BBC approached Mobile UK, which represents the four big mobile phone companies, as well as BT, for comment.

The mobile operators and BT said they were committed to taking action against nuisance calls and to working with Ofcom and law enforcement bodies to reduce the threat.

They added that they take customers’ security very seriously and advised people to hang up straight away if they are suspicious about any call.

You can hear more on BBC Radio 4’s Money Box programme on Saturday at 12pm on Radio 4 or by listening again here shortly after broadcast.