KNUTSFORD resident Jonathan Farber is urging people to be on their guard for phone scammers.

Jonathan was called by someone apparently from Amazon to say that his account had been hacked.

He said: “The caller said that my account had been hacked and had been cancelled for security purposes, but they were offering a discounted renewal subscription to Amazon Prime. Foolishly they called me on an unlisted private line, plus they had no previous renewal date.

"So I fed them a fake one, in November, which they continued to refer to.

“I knew it was rubbish, and so I terminated the conversation.

“Almost instantly I was called back by someone else who was quite hostile asking why I had hung up on them.

"I told him – ‘You don’t have this number, it's not even listed on my Amazon account, and there is no strange activity on my account I can see’. He hung up.

“I spent 40 minutes on the phone with Amazon UK resolving the issue.”

Action Fraud, the national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre, is warning people of a new scam that has seen victims lose over £400,000.

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Unsuspecting members of the public are being targeted with automated calls which tell them a fraudster has used their personal details to sign up for an Amazon Prime subscription.

The victim is instructed to press 1 to cancel the transaction. When they do this, they are connected to the real scammer posing as an Amazon customer service representative.