Fraud is now the most prevalent crime in the UK. If you are lucky, the damage is limited to the administrative stress that comes with being a victim, and that can be considerable.

For others, the consequences are far worse. People can lose their savings, their identities, and sometimes even their livelihoods if they fall into the hands of the wrong person.

At one of my recent community meetings, a resident told me that she had been the victim of fraud and, through no fault of her own, had been locked out of her social media account. Years of photos and messages have effectively disappeared. Despite repeated attempts to recover the account she has made little progress.

Her frustration was not just with the fraud itself, but with the fact that the platform involved seemed unreachable: an untouchable big tech company with no clear way to resolve the problem.

Even more concerning, the account remains active and she still receives notifications from it, despite having no control over it. As she said to me in a follow-up email, if this is how difficult it is to resolve a relatively limited case, what happens to people facing far more serious fraud?

Fraud has become the transnational crime threat of our time. A quarter of all fraud affecting the UK involves perpetrators based overseas. We know there are organised scam centres operating across parts of Asia, West Africa, Eastern Europe, China and India. This is industrial-scale criminality. Around one in four businesses and one in 14 adults have been victims.

While traditional scams by post, phone or in person still occur, the biggest prize for fraudsters is online. With a few clicks they can target thousands of potential victims at once.

I wrote recently about the government’s proposals to move away from county-based policing towards larger regional forces, alongside the creation of an FBI-style service to deal with complex crimes such as fraud. This week the Government also launched its new Fraud Strategy, including plans for a dedicated online crime squad and a new state-of-the-art hub in central London to lead the national fight against fraud.

Online services do bring convenience. But that convenience brings risk. A link clicked in a hurry, a product bought through social media without checking whether the seller is genuine, or a company promising life-changing returns that sound too good to be true, usually because they are. All it takes is a few bank details and the fraudster is on their way.

Last month, I attended an event hosted by the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud, to launch the new Report Fraud service (the replacement for Action Fraud). The aim is to make reporting fraud easier and to allow victims to track progress as cases are investigated. Importantly, it will also help authorities block scam websites and suspicious bank accounts more quickly, disrupting operations at their source.

But there is an uncomfortable truth. Criminals will always look for new ways to stay one step ahead. Artificial intelligence, which promises many benefits, will also make fraud more sophisticated. Chatbots can already pose convincingly as real people, armed with enough personal information to deceive even cautious individuals.

As fraudsters evolve their tactics, law enforcement must keep pace. But the police cannot do it alone. Banks, telecoms companies and social media platforms all have a responsibility to play their part in protecting their users and helping fix the problem when something goes wrong (in the case of social media, a person at the end of a phone would be a good first step).

And we all have a role too. If something seems suspicious, report it. The new Report Fraud service is a good place to start at www.reportfraud.police.uk