I fell for a Coldplay concert ticket scam on Facebook – here’s how to avoid my mistake

A rush of blood to the head: James’s Facebook account had been hacked. The person we’d been talking to was a fraudster posing as someone I knew - (Getty/The Independent)

You might think you’re pretty good at spotting a scam – I did. Flat-hunting in Facebook groups? It’s obvious which too-good-to-be-true apartments are not legit. Tickets to long-sold-out gigs magically available at face value on X? Sure, Jan. Text messages claiming to be Evri with an unexpected parcel? Seen that before. I thought I was sooo savvy, quietly going “Nope!” as I deleted them and thinking oof, imagine being caught out like that.

And then I got a message from James.