Episode 11 Rip Off Britain

We asked you to tell us what's left you feeling ripped off

and you contacted us in your thousands.

You've told us about the companies you think get it wrong

and the customer service that simply is not up to scratch.

It's my money and it's not right for anyone to rip you off.

I don't understand how they get hold of my information.

You've asked us to track down the scammers who stole your money

and investigate the extra charges you say are unfair.

You don't get compensated.

It takes a long time to get things done and nobody cares.

In the end, I told him no, because I knew it was a scam.

And when you've lost out but no-one else is to blame,

you've come to us to stop others falling into the same trap.

So whether it's a blatant rip-off, or a genuine mistake.

We're here to find out why you're out of pocket

and what you can do about it.

Your stories - your money.

This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello and welcome to Rip-Off Britain,

the programme that's here to make sure

that wherever and whatever you're spending your money on,

you know exactly what you're getting

and that you're getting exactly what you want.

Now, I know that may seem a rather simple thing to ask,

but when it comes to shopping on the internet,

it is not always as easy as it sounds, is it, Julia?

No, it really isn't. And it can be easy to forget

that the same rules don't always apply online

as they do on the high street.

For instance, if the online company you're buying from isn't based in the UK,

then you won't have the same rights if you end up being ripped off.

But of course shopping isn't all that we do online.

Millions of us have signed up to websites

for everything from banking to dating or social media,

handing over, let's face it, some of our most valuable personal details in the process.

Today, we'll be uncovering a lot of stuff

that even the most seasoned internet user may not know.

And I guarantee that by the end of the programme,

you'll be a lot more internet-savvy than you are right now.

Coming up, why even on the most trusted websites

you could be caught out by ads specifically targeting you.

Years and years ago, they talked about "Big Brother is watching you"

and we never ever thought that it would come, but it's here.

And how fraudsters can piece together

even your most basic details

to get their hands on your cash.

I did actually find a couple of Russian forums

which mentioned your e-mail address and telephone number.

In fact, at the moment your name plus e-mail address and telephone number

can be sold by a cyber-crime gang for about one and a half US dollars.

Thanks to the internet,

these days we can buy something from the other side of the planet

just as easily as if it was a shop round the corner.

And while most of the time that works just as it should,

there are occasions when it's not clear exactly where

the company you're dealing with is based.

After all, you'd think that a web address that ends in .co.uk

means the company is based right here, wouldn't you?

In fact, you'd be wrong.

When she's not spending time at her friend's equestrian centre,

Vikki Curtis loves socialising with her friends.

But her morale took a bad knock when she started to lose her hair.

My hair's thinning on top

and as the years have gone on, it's got thinner and thinner

and I was finding it difficult to get a nice hairstyle.

A friend persuaded her to try a wig, and it's boosted Vikki's confidence

so much that she now won't leave the house without one.

I wouldn't be seen out in public now without a wig.

I find it difficult to go to the hairdressers to get my hair cut.

Vikki's decision to wear wigs all the time

meant she was faced with a new and sometimes daunting challenge -

shopping for the right ones.

It's very important to get the right wig because

if you don't feel good in your wig, it's pointless wearing it.

Vicki usually feels more comfortable buying wigs online than in a shop,

but with a recent purchase, that's how she ran into trouble.

I just did a search on the net

to see if there was any other companies out there,

and I came across the Wigshow.

Wigshow.co.uk had lots of stock on offer.

It was all reasonably priced,

and it appeared to Vikki that it was based in the UK.

It says in their frequently asked questions that they are British,

they are a British company, and it just looks totally up-to-date.

So I was expecting a real, good-quality wig.

Trusting in the website, Vikki went ahead

and placed an order for two wigs.

Both were on offer at half the normal price and the total cost was £139.

But when the wigs arrived, she was shocked by their quality.

There is no style in it. It's just awful.

You can't do anything with it. It feels horrible, it smells.

I'm just embarrassed to have the thing on my head.

Vicky is so upset about her wigs

that she won't wear them in public anymore,

but she has let me bring them down to London

so I can get an expert opinion on them.

Top West End hairdresser Trevor Sorbie

runs a charity called My New Hair

which gives people advice on where to find an approved wig fitter.

God, it feels so...gritty.

It's unlike a good wig because a good wig,

it would feel like real hair

because the technology in synthetic wigs today is fantastic.

And presumably it would also be incredibly uncomfortable to wear.

I mean, you look inside...

Well, you see this is very rough on the scalp.

It's disgusting that people can do this to very vulnerable people.

I mean, you know, you only wear a wig when you have to.

The last thing you want to do is draw attention to yourself.

You want to just look normal, like you normally do.

And if you're wearing something like this,

all you're doing is, "Guess what I'm wearing?"

It's... It's unacceptable, totally.

That's exactly what Vikki had thought when she received the wigs.

So she e-mailed wigshow.co.uk saying she wanted to return them.

And I received an e-mail back saying, "How about you keep the wigs

"and sell them on to somebody else, and we will refund you 10%?"

But Vikki wanted her money back,

so she told Wigshow their offer simply wasn't acceptable.

Their response to that - and to the next few e-mails she sent -

started to make Vikki suspicious

about this supposedly British company.

I realised that they weren't English

because the grammar in the e-mails was terrible,

I actually said to them "You've obviously lied on your website.

"You are not UK-based.

"Could you please give me an address to send these wigs back to

"and I want a full refund."

In numerous e-mails over the next few hours,

Wigshow refused to refund Vikki the full £139 she'd paid

or pay for the postage to send the wigs back.

They eventually agreed to refund me £90

and they gave me a returns address,

which was China.

And I knew then I was better to cut my losses and just take the £90.

And when she challenged them about their claims to be based in the UK,

they didn't respond.

We showed the company website to our technology expert, David McClelland.

And though he could see that they'd said they were based in the UK,

and that the web address ending with co.uk

might make you think that,

David said there are a few telltale signs to look for

that reveal it isn't the case.

So when you first visit wigshow.co.uk, it looks great.

It's a very professional-looking website,

lots of striking images and so on.

But when you start scratching below the surface,

you start to notice that everything perhaps isn't quite as it should be.

So when we go down to the bottom of the screen here,

something you notice is this copyright, copyright 2014-2016.

That's a bit odd. We're not at 2016 yet.

And then you look at this introductory paragraph

at the bottom.

It's littered with spelling and grammar mistakes as well.

There are more clues across the site...

The Contact Us page

is always quite a good way to assess the credibility of a website.

So if we click on here, there's no telephone number given,

there's no address given, and again,

more spelling mistakes too.

Any business - wherever it's based -

can use a web address that ends with the letters co.uk.

It doesn't mean they're actually located here.

And a good company won't make it hard to find out

where they really are.

The next thing to look out for is when it comes to placing your order.

Wigshow appears to accept all types of credit and debit card.

When you try and buy, though, they don't accept these.

It only accepts PayPal.

Again, by itself, that maybe isn't a particularly bad sign,

but when you combine all of these things together,

it starts to build up a picture of a website

that maybe you need to be quite cautious about buying from.

And if you've got a little bit more internet know-how,

it's easy to do some further research to check out the truth

behind some of the pictures the website is showing you.

Find an image, do a right-click, and on this web browser,

it says, "Search Google for this image."

It might be a little bit different on your web browser.

And what that does, it shows you where else on the internet

that image has actually been used,

and we see that the image we clicked on from the Wig Store website,

is actually a picture of Beyonce Knowles' sister,

and it's relatively unlikely, I would say,

that she is wearing the wig that Wig Store is selling.

And we can see the exact picture that the Wig Store website has...

borrowed, stolen, taken and used on their website.

The photo of Beyonce's sister, Solange, isn't the only picture

that Wigshow appears to have "borrowed" to promote their wigs.

In fact, we were also contacted

by a genuinely British-based, family-run wig company called Wigs4U,

who told us that photos of their wigs and models

have somehow been used all over the Wigshow website.

OK, so this is our Wigs4U website,

and as you can see here,

this is a picture of our model, Lucy,

wearing the wig "Charlie."

And if I click over onto the Wigshow website,

you can see Lucy again in this image.

Wigshow have never contacted me at all,

to ask for any permission to use the photos that I modelled for.

They've just taken this image

and put it on their website along with many other of our styles.

We're really particular on the quality,

the workmanship that goes into these wigs.

We check all of our orders when they come in

and have a really good relationship with our suppliers, the manufacturers.

We contacted Wigshow to ask about Vikki's order,

and the use of photographs taken from other companies' sites.

But they didn't answer any of our questions,

simply claiming that they treat their customers well

and try to do their best with any problems.

Companies based outside the EU

aren't subject to the same trading laws as those in the UK,

which can make it hard to get your money back when things go wrong.

So perhaps Vikki was lucky. She did get a £90 refund from Wigshow,

meaning she's just £30 out of pocket.

But she's still upset by what happened

and hopes others don't end up in the same position.

I think the Wigshow are taking advantage

of really vulnerable people

and I really wanted to do something about it,

to stop the Wigshow taking advantage of any more people.

This year, more of you than ever before

have told us that you've come a cropper

after signing up for a so-called "risk-free trial" of something online

and sometimes ended up hundreds of pounds out of pocket.

But what can be especially frustrating

is that these aren't simply offers that you've seen advertised,

I don't know, on some random website.

Indeed, quite often it's the reverse.

Maybe you've come across some on trusted sites you use all the time.

So the question is, how did they get there in the first place?

Well, we've been unpicking the world of internet advertising.

So if you've ever wondered how it is that the ads you see online

can be for products uncannily close

to the things that you really are interested in,

then here's the reason why.

Pat Preece enjoys a nice bit of pampering...

But it's a habit she only acquired recently,

after her husband, Don, sadly passed away

and Pat needed some time to herself.

Don was diagnosed with cancer back in 2013,

and he died nine months later.

He and Pat had been married for 52 years.

Right, do you want to come down to the treatment room?

Yes, yes. Thank you.

The whole experience has changed my outlook on life.

Every day is a bonus.

I really haven't thought to even have my nails done

or have facials and things like that

because I've always been too busy with other things.

In the last months of his life, Don was cared for in a nursing home.

And as a distraction,

Pat tried to keep on top of her Christmas shopping

by doing it online.

I would have sleepless nights.

And I found that I could be with Don all day and shop all night.

And this is how I did all of my Christmas shopping.

Pat spotted an ad on her Facebook page

for a face cream that looked like a great deal.

This is where I saw the skincare products advertised.

All these things, they just pop up.

While you're on Facebook, they just pop up.

It was anti-wrinkle and anti-ageing.

It was anti-everything. And I could have two free samples.

And all I had to do was send £4.95

to pay for the postage and packing.

Sounded good, so Pat ordered the creams,

paid the £4.95 and thought little more about it,

until, two months later, she discovered it hadn't been

such a great deal after all.

The face cream company had charged her over £380.

And Pat hadn't realised that by accepting the terms and conditions

of the trial - which unfortunately, like most people,

she'd ticked without actually reading -

she'd given them permission to charge her credit card

every month until she asked them to stop.

We've looked into very similar situations before

with free trials or deals on absolutely everything,

you name it, from diet pills and supplements

to face creams, like the ones Pat bought.

Now, what they typically have in common

is that buried deep in the small print,

can be a nasty sting in the tail - one that, if we're honest,

some of them are counting on you not spotting.

But this is more than just a case of not reading the small print.

Quite a few of you have told us you were sucked in

only because you were reassured

about where you saw the ad in the first place.

So in Pat's case, it was because she'd seen it on Facebook

that she didn't really think there was anything to worry about.

But be warned,

online advertising is a whole lot more complicated

than you might have realised.

Our technology expert, David McClelland,

knows all about how these ads work.

So we asked him to visit Pat and her daughter Jill to explain it all

so that next time they spot a trial that looks risk-free,

they'll know more about what they could be getting into.

So how much did it end up costing you altogether,

before you realised what was happening

-and the money was being taken out of your bank?

-£384.

So as far as you understood,

when you saw that advertisement on Facebook,

this was a risk-free trial.

You would pay a small amount of money for postage,

you would get those goods and that would be the end of your dealings with them.

That would be the end of it. And my mind wasn't on this, face creams.

My mind was on being with Don, and being here on my own.

In the end, Pat cancelled her order,

returned the products and was given a £75 refund.

She was still £300 out of pocket.

However, she put it down to experience.

After all, Pat admits she should have read the terms and conditions.

But it's not just chance

that the ad turned up on her Facebook page in the first place.

Because of the information that you share with Facebook,

it knows your name, it knows the things you like,

it knows your friends and what they like.

It knows quite a lot of information about you.

That information is dynamite to advertisers

who want to use Facebook to promote their services,

because they can target specific adverts

to specific groups of people.

And as David is about to demonstrate,

it's surprisingly simple for advertisers

to target potential customers in this way...

..by making use of the information

that people like Pat have posted online.

We can create an advert

and target it using people's information.

Let's create an advert that people in Staffordshire,

or even more specific, people in Stafford.

Right, how old do we want these people to be

who are going to see this advert?

Think of a number.

-70.

-70, that's good for me.

-Now, men, women, everybody?

-Everybody.

-Everybody, all. Good.

How about relationship status? So only people who are...single.

You can see how really precise

we can already be with these adverts.

So there's a saying about using online services

that are supposedly free,

that if you're not paying for the product,

then you probably are the product.

And the fact is that Facebook makes its money out of information

that you give to it, that it can then use to sell advertising to you.

-Do you find that a bit scary?

-Very.

-Yes, yes, I do.

-It's frightening.

-It's very frightening.

-I'm not happy about it.

-No?

Pat saw the face creams on Facebook,

but sophisticated online advertising like this

is used right across the internet.

And here's another clever thing about how it works.

You may have noticed that if you search for something online one day,

the very same thing you were looking for will all of a sudden

appear in adverts on other websites you visit the next day.

And that is NOT a coincidence.

Most websites use things called cookies,

software that tracks information about you

on the basis of which websites you visit - and how often you do it.

So, there are two types of cookies that end up on your computer.

The good cookies, as you might like to call them, first party cookies,

and they are an essential part of how the internet works.

They remember preferences, so, for example,

if you're visiting the BBC website it might remember

where you like your weather forecast to be from

or how big you like the text to be on the page.

-Oh, I see...

-Now the other cookies, really, are called third party cookies

and these are the tracking cookies that advertisers leave on your machine

and that enables them to do this tracking from place to place,

from site to site, to help them build up this profile.

You can delete those cookies from within your browser and start again.

You're basically wiping the slate clean,

but you will lose a lot of the goodness that comes from those first party cookies as well.

Well, it's amazing. And I don't like it, really.

It's technology, isn't it?

We asked Facebook about the way they work with advertisers -

and how they protect the data of site users like Pat -

but they chose not to comment.

And the company which sold Pat the face cream

apologised to her for any inconvenience,

but pointed out that they were only ever acting

according to their terms and conditions.

It's been an eye-opener for Pat and Jill who now realise

that however much they trust the site where they see an ad,

the ads themselves can be an entirely different story.

I've got a mobile phone, I've got my computer.

It's a wonderful thing.

But I feel that it is really intrusive.

And it reminds me, years and years ago,

they talked about "Big Brother is watching you"

and we never ever thought that it would come, but it's here.

And they know too much about all of us.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain, the online "friends"

caught out by a scamster in their midst!

I felt sick, I felt stupid.

When I started speaking to the other ladies as well,

they all felt the same.

Our one-stop consumer advice pop-up shop has opened its doors

once again, and this year we came to the West Midlands.

We've got a great team of experts with us this year,

everything from trading standards to online security specialists

not to mention legal and financial experts

and they're all keen to sort out the consumer problems

that you are bringing through the doors.

Hi, Tony, thanks very much for coming in.

Tony Owen came to see financial expert Sarah Pennells

with a complaint that we hear a lot.

He doesn't want to pay his phone bill by direct debit.

But he doesn't see why that should mean he has to pay an extra surcharge.

Although I pay promptly, I get charged £24 per annum

as an additional cost

which I feel is totally unreasonable.

Companies are allowed to charge you extra

as long as they make it clear

when they give you your options for how you pay.

I actually think this is something that...the regulator

needs to take a really close look at this because a lot of people,

like you, want to have a bit more control about how much they pay

-and when they pay it.

-That's my prime objection towards direct debits.

Having had a quick scoot around,

I haven't looked at all the companies,

and it seems that the one that you're with actually has one of the lower surcharges.

I mean, there's another company that charges £5 a month

so it's £60 a year, £54 a year.

The figure of between £50 and £60 seems to be standard.

Have you thought about going onto social media to air your feelings?

-You might find other people agree with you.

-No, I haven't.

Go out there and make some noise.

I'm not a noisy person normally.

Throughout the weekend, we tried to meet as many of you as we could.

At our pop up shop we give everything free.

Advice free, leaflets free, everything, indeed. Here you go.

And our experts ran workshops packed with tips and advice.

At this one, online security expert David McClelland

had some great hints on how to keep your passwords safe

from internet hackers...

How many of you people out there just have one password

that you use for everything when you're online?

We've all got more and more online accounts, right?

I mean, if I have the same password for all of those accounts,

it's like giving someone a key

and that key is the key to your front door, your back door,

and that's why it's really, really a bad idea

just to have one password to secure your entire digital presence, if you like.

Now the problem is, I have only one password because I can't remember

anything more and I bet a lot of people are the same,

so what do we do about that?

First of all, if you're choosing a password,

do not use a word from the dictionary.

Do not choose something like your mother's maiden name

or the place you were born or the name of your kids

because that's stuff that anyone can easily get access to

from your social networking profile,

so choose something that means something special to you.

So, if your password that you've thought of has got an i in it,

change that to an exclamation mark

because that's not something that appears in a dictionary

and the online fraudsters

are going to find that much more difficult to guess.

So, for example, if there's a B try changing that to a 3

because it looks a bit like a B, doesn't it?

And we've got an A, that also looks a bit like a number 4.

So when you start mixing all that stuff together

this is a word that will not appear in the dictionary

but will be instantly far more secure

than the password you might have chosen.

David's put together a factsheet on staying safe online.

You can download it from our website at bbc.co.uk/ripoffbritain.

The internet is awash with all sorts of places

where you can sell your unwanted stuff,

or indeed buy somebody else's for a lot less than they would cost new.

An increasing number of you

are turning to your favourite social media sites to buy and sell your goods.

After all, not only will your ad be free

but what better way to sell than amongst like-minded people

that you might even have classified as friends.

But watch out, because some of you have found out the hard way

that just because everyone looks like they're friends online,

doesn't mean they actually are, and some of your online acquaintances

might behave in a distinctly unfriendly way.

Over a third of the entire UK population

is now reckoned to log on to Facebook every single day.

And amongst the social network's most regular users

is event organiser Angela Wood from West Yorkshire.

But she doesn't use it just to keep in touch with friends and family.

The Facebook groups that she's a member of

also play a big part in her wedding planning business.

I think it's more accessible than a lot of other community-based sites

that are on the internet at the moment.

It's a closed group,

so you actually have to be invited onto the group.

That means you can only access the information that's been put there,

or add your own comments and postings,

once you've been accepted by the group's administrators,

or by a friend who's already a member.

Groups like the ones Angela uses have become a way for individuals,

or small businesses like hers, to buy and sell things online.

They're rather like impromptu classified sites, with, it seems,

the added bonus that you're only dealing with like-minded people.

On one of the groups, there is about 40,000 members throughout the UK.

Which is great, but I'm on at least 30 other wedding sites

which are all fantastic for helping each other,

for advising each other, for passing information on.

Angela was coordinating a wedding reception.

And with the budget very tight,

she turned to her trusty Facebook buy and sell sites

to find some bargain accessories to help make it an occasion to remember.

I was talking on Facebook on one of the wedding sites,

asking a lady about certain items that she was selling

and another lady popped up onto the messages and interrupted the messages,

stating that she had some items for sale and would I be interested?

The Facebook user - who called herself Vicky Elliot -

seemed to have just the sort of items Angela was looking for...

I decided to purchase from her a lovely postbox,

some martini glasses, some cushions

and the best thing was a Mr & Mrs wooden carved sign,

which was just in the perfect colours for us.

When Angela asked how she should pay,

she was told that Vicky's PayPal account wasn't working,

so she'd need to pay by bank transfer instead.

And while normally that would set alarm bells ringing,

Vicky was, after all, a member of a closed Facebook group.

So it was easy for Angela to find out a little bit more about her.

I looked at her Facebook profile page.

She had pictures on there of her family, friends,

happy birthday messages...

It just seemed as genuine as my Facebook page.

So I just trusted her.

And that trust grew when Vicky even offered to deduct from her price

the fees that Angela's bank said they'd charge for the transaction.

I just thought, "Oh, what a lovely person."

She just obviously wants to get rid of the items.

She doesn't want them in her house any more.

She... You know, any little bit of money that they can get for them.

So Angela went to her bank

and transferred £76 into Vicky's account.

But when she returned home

and began browsing through some other wedding sites on Facebook,

she made a very worrying discovery...

I just happened to go onto the wedding scammers site,

and that's when her name popped up.

People posting messages about what she'd done to them.

So obviously, I posted my message saying,

"I have just purchased some items from this individual.

"Oh, dear."

And they asked me what I'd purchased and a couple of them said,

"Yeah, we've purchased those items as well from her."

More than 20 users were saying that they had not received

any of the goods they'd purchased from Vicky Elliot.

And as they too had paid her through bank transfer,

there was no way of getting their money back.

Angela immediately got in touch with Vicky

to try and get to the bottom of what she was reading.

I explained to her that there's been a post put up

on one of the sites regarding her, and what she's been up to.

She came back at me, and she said, "I've seen that.

"It's nothing to do with me. Honestly, I am genuine.

"Here is my mobile number, please ring me." Which I did.

She again... We had a long conversation, she again

seemed very genuine, promised me the goods would be in the post

and as we were talking on the telephone she said,

"Look, I'm doing the transaction now, via a courier.

"I will send you all the information."

So Angela was reassured but only temporarily.

Vicky started to make excuses about not being able to send the goods,

and meanwhile, Angela kept seeing more and more allegations

about Vicky appearing on Facebook.

So she felt she had no option but to ask for her money back.

I just thought, hopefully,

she's not even taken the money out of the bank yet,

so she can do a refund.

So I did send her a message in the morning saying, "Please,

"I know I'm not going to get the goods now,

"so please send me a refund."

Which she promised me she would do.

She said she obviously didn't want to speak to me anymore,

but she would send me a refund, and it will be done within two hours.

But, I'm afraid, the two hours passed

and there was no sign of Angela's refund.

When she brought it up with Vicky,

her previously friendly manner seemed to have completely vanished.

She then got very abusive when I sent her a message

asking her why the money wasn't in the account,

as promised, within two hours.

So she just sent me one very, very abusive message and blocked me

so I couldn't send any messages to her.

Wouldn't pick up the phone to me,

so there was just no way that I could contact her at all.

Facing the realisation that she wasn't likely to see her money again,

Angela decided to share her experience

with the other members of the Facebook community.

And for many of them, it was a familiar story.

I felt sick, I felt stupid.

I felt embarrassed.

But when I started speaking to the other ladies as well,

they all felt the same. Unfortunately, some brides

have lost quite a lot of money to this individual,

a lot more than me, and they've done the same thing.

She said exactly the same to them,

that their PayPal wasn't working properly.

But at the end of the day, when you want something,

you're blinkered, and you just think, "Yes, I want them."

We tried to contact Vicky Elliot about Angela's experience,

but she didn't respond to our e-mails or, indeed, our letters.

We also asked Facebook about Angela's situation,

and about the buy and sell pages on their site.

They declined to comment, although in the past,

while stressing the greater accountability and security

that their site offers compared to others,

they've advised people to be vigilant

when buying goods outside of approved retailers.

Angela's experience underlines the advice

we've said on the programme many, many times before.

Avoid buying anything online via a bank transfer.

Because you won't be able to retrieve your money

if there's a problem.

But despite what's happened,

Angela hasn't been put off using community buy and sell sites,

although she'll definitely be more cautious in the future.

I just feel so stupid that I've let it happen.

But it does happen.

I always said that it would never happen to me,

and it has.

Now, this may sound just a little bit scary.

Whether you're someone who shares

absolutely every aspect of your personal life with other people on the social media,

or if you guard your privacy with gusto,

you can be pretty certain that somewhere out there on the internet,

there are pretty basic details of who you are,

where you live, when you were born and they're all freely available.

The truth is,

we're simply not as protective of our personal information as we should be.

So we've done a test to find out

exactly what the consequences of lax security can be.

And to discover how even the most basic details

can help fraudsters earn a fortune.

We're not all as safe online as we'd like to think.

And sharing too much information about ourselves

can make us easy targets for online criminals.

So today, at London's Earls Court,

some of the top experts in internet security have come together

to share ways of beating the fraudsters.

It's the job of people like James Lyne

to stay one step ahead of the scammers.

But that's a challenge that never stops evolving!

Any convenience technology that we come up with,

from wireless to the new internet of things,

devices we're plugging into every part of our homes and business life.

Any time we adopt one of those,

the scammers come up with a creative way to abuse it.

So we've asked James to help us with a test.

To find out just how easy it is to get hold of personal information online,

he's going see how much information he can track down about this man.

I have his name and e-mail address and we're going to find out

exactly how much information we can get online about him and his life.

Our guinea pig for James's research

is Rip-Off Britain viewer Ashley Lawrence,

who wrote to us after he became one of the four million victims

of ID theft in the UK.

James is going to be trying to work out how that happened,

identifying how much information there is online about Ashley,

and showing him how to protect himself from it ever happening again.

Whoever stole Ashley's identity back in 2012

managed to set up a second user on his credit card,

and spent more than £2,000 before the fraud was spotted.

It was very worrying to find how easily a complete stranger

had been able to find out information about me

and how easy it was for them to convince a bank that they were me.

Ashley did get his money back from the credit card company,

but the crime made it obvious just how insecure his accounts were.

All the fraudster seemed to need was his date of birth

or his mother's maiden name, along with freely available information

like his address or phone number.

Information like my e-mail address, my home address,

my telephone number

is information that I had regarded as not at all confidential.

I'd happily give that information to anybody who requested it.

And many of us might do the same.

But as James is about to demonstrate,

even such basic information is just the starting point for a fraudster.

-Ashley.

-How are you?

We'd given James Ashley's full name and e-mail address but nothing more.

But from just those details he was able to open the door

to a surprising amount of personal information.

So, Ashley, I've been doing a little searching

based on the information that you provided

and I just want to share a couple of the results.

-Does this number here mean anything to you?

-Yes, it does.

What is that number?

It's been my home telephone number for the last 20 odd years.

And combining these key pieces of information with the name

and e-mail address that he started with, suddenly finding out more

about Ashley is made a lot easier.

Just those small nuggets of information are enough

to start a ripple effect.

Most people don't think twice about posting I'm XYZ age today,

not realising they've just given away their date of birth

which is, of course, a secret when it comes to setting up credit cards,

banking information and alike.

It's much more valuable than people think.

And what's really scary is how far some of this information can travel.

I did actually find a couple of Russian forums

which mentioned your e-mail address and telephone number.

There are people that go out looking for victims

and they've obviously siphoned that information

and put it onto a list and gone, "Hey, here's an interesting target."

I don't think I've ever had any connection

with any Russian person, firm or company, so...

No, it's quite common.

In fact, at the moment your name plus e-mail address and telephone number

can be sold by a cyber-crime gang for about one and a half US dollars.

If they had any financial information about you -

credit card details, bank account details -

that becomes worth about 40 US dollars.

But things are about to get even more shocking for Ashley

as James reveals how even information about Ashley's hobbies

can make him an easy target.

It enables them to tailor a scam,

perhaps knowing the people that you're regularly in contact with

and you trust or the interests that are most likely to get you

to go to a website or double-click.

If you consider, if I was to send you an e-mail from James Lyne

saying please open this file.

Who's James Lyne? And probably ignore it

but if I sent it from one of the members

of the programme committee of this society...

-I'd open it automatically...

-..as most people would.

But e-mails like that can come with a dangerous attachment -

or the suggestion you click on a particular link.

You might automatically click that link

before you've even realised the e-mail is not from someone you trust.

That one click won't have led you to anywhere useful.

But it could give the hackers access to everything inside your computer!

Using a second computer,

James can show Ashley exactly how it is

that once you've clicked the link on a spurious e-mail,

a fraudster can get their hands on all of your secrets.

So I've just deployed a virus to this system here

and I can do things like this.

I can grab photos of the screen so this is now me,

the other side of the world, taking photos of your computer.

-Right...

-I could turn on the webcam.

I could access the files on the system as well.

What's on my computer, you now have access to.

-Exactly.

-And I don't know that you've done that?

-Exactly.

So, a trail that begins with something as simple as a name

and an e-mail address can end up with hackers getting full access

to your computer and anything that's on it.

-It's terrifying.

-It's surprisingly easy, isn't it?

With such a little bit of information,

that they're able to expand upon it.

And really take over my personality, my...that's terrifying.

But don't panic!

James has got plenty of advice

to help us all better protect ourselves.

First things first, make sure you're running good,

-up-to-date anti-virus and security software on your computer.

-Yes.

It's not going to stop everything

but it will deal with a lot of the problems.

Next, you want to make sure that if you do have an online presence

like your e-mail address you're sharing to the world,

maybe have another e-mail address that you use for your online shopping

or another e-mail address you use with friends and family

so that they can't just hit you in one place and get everything.

And finally, a non-technical one, just consider,

does this person really need that information?

Can I lie and give them

a false date of birth to limit the data that's out there about you?

Those are all tips Ashley will be following from now on.

I'm going to be very much more careful in future

about giving information.

I'm going to be far more wary, far more cautious

and I'd advise other people to do the same.

Here at Rip-Off Britain,

we're always ready to investigate more of your stories.

You can write to us at:

Or send us an e-mail to:

And remember that the Rip-Off team

is ready and waiting to investigate your stories.

You know, I would guess that most of us who use the internet have,

at some point or another, given out details

that we just would not dream of handing over to someone in person.

Because really it's just too easy to forget,

when you're sitting in the comfort of your own home,

that we can't necessarily trust everything or everyone

that we come across online.

And that's a mistake that could leave you out of pocket.

So the obvious advice is not to take what you see on a website as fact

without doing a bit more research yourself.

Because sometimes the online shop

that looks like it's just around the corner might not be.

And that advert that seems to be speaking directly to your interests

has been put there to do just that.

So remember, whenever a website is asking for personal details,

money - or both - it pays to be cautious before you give away either.

Well, one website you can definitely trust is our own

at bbc.co.uk/ripoffbritain.

You'll find plenty more tips and advice there

about staying safe online and we'll be back soon with more stories

that we hope will keep you and your money out of trouble.

-Till then, from all of us, goodbye.

-Bye-bye.