The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) has received evidence of scams where homeworkers are  receiving bogus texts and emails claiming to be from Zoom.

One message claims to be from “Zoom Mail” which informs the recipient that a “Zoom voicemail” has been received and that they should call a premium rate number that the message claims costs “£6 plus std net rate”.

Another message, sent via email, pretends to be a Zoom conference call invitation that asks the recipient to click a link to “review invitation”. The link then leads to a fake login page which asks the recipient to put in their username and password, sending the information to scammers.

Katherine Hart, CTSI lead officer, says: “Everyone receiving messages like these should take precautions. A legitimate message will never ask you to pay money to access voicemails, and messages received outside of the specified platform should always be treated with healthy suspicion.

“This type of scam is by no means limited to the Zoom platform, and the public should apply the same precautions to all.

“If you receive these kinds of emails, report them to the National Cyber Security Centre and your organisation’s head of IT.”

The Zoom warning comes as the Office for National Statistics released figures about the number of people working from home due to coronavirus.

It found that in April 2020, 46.6% of people in employment did some work at home. Of those who worked from home at some point, 86% did so as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trading Standards has also warned of a rise in scam calls as fraudulent call centres return to work after lockdown.