Almost half of Irish adults have reported being targeted by scam calls, texts or emails, according to new research by Fraud Smart.

Newstalk’s tech correspondent Jess Kelly told Newstalk Breakfast that scammers “play on the fact that we are human beings”.

“They play on the fact that someone in your house might be waiting for something from An Post, or maybe someone who has access to your car did drive through a toll and didn’t pay it,” she said.

“They’re identifying moments of humanity and humanness and then sending out a scam text in the hopes that you are a law-abiding citizen, a good egg who wants to do the right thing.

“You click, you pay, and therefore they get access to your funds - it’s becoming so prevalent that finally we are starting to see some action being taken.”

Consumer protectionists warn of a scam: Be careful when calling from alleged Microsoft support. Photo: Christin Klose/dpa-tmn. October 2019.

Jess said that, as of last week, businesses had to register their phone number if they are sending out text communications with customers.

Ideally, this means that customers phones will flag texts from unregistered numbers as scams.

However, she said many of these scams are "incredibly sophisticated".

“I got a text a text a number of years ago now, but it came into the same thread text as Bank of Ireland, which is my bank,” she said.

“I clicked on it, because it was saying there was an unusual purchase, and I was brought to a website that looked exactly like the Banking 365 (Bank of Ireland’s online banking service) webpage.

“The only way I knew for certain that it was a scam was I didn’t put in my six-digit code, I put in 123456, and it let me log into the next screen.

“The idea with those ones is that they’re trying to actually clone what I input, therefore they would have the digits of my banking code to be able to get into my banking system and clean my account.”

Incoming call from unknown number. Scam online on phone

According to Jess, there is no completely foolproof method to avoid these scams, but she did offer some tips for things to watch out for.

“The first thing that I’d always look for if they are looking for your sensitive information is on the top, in the web browser bar, the HTTPS, that S signifies that it’s secure,” she said.

“If you’re on a checkout page, if you’re about to purchase something, look for the padlock – I'd always recommend people either use a credit card if you shop responsibly and all the rest, or a digital card.

“A lot of banks now, Revolut for example, are great with doing it, they’ll give you a sort of one-time code of a long card number and expiry date and all the rest for a one-time purchase.

“That means that if that website is compromised, is a scam, they’re not going to have any joy.”

Jess said “it’s a pain in the face” but, if you are unsure of a link from a service provider, always call them to verify it.

She also recommended not to follow text links, and said to login to the online service and try find where to solve the issue there.