HERE is a cautionary tale. Last week, I stopped at the Cherwell Valley motorway services and had a terrible meal. But it’s not the food I want to warn you about. It is a fraud that cost British people £460 million last year.

We took our bucket of chicken back to the counter at the KFC outlet at the service station. The deep-brown chicken looked pulled from the frying fat just before it burned. The staff were distinctly unhelpful. “We can change it, but it will come out just the same,” one said, casually.

We peeled the skin to eat it. But, although the chicken was overdone, the fries were cold and soggy. I took it back again. “It’s the oil. They are trying out a new oil,” an assistant said. Which didn’t explain why the chips were cold. So far, so bad.

I posted a warning to others on X, telling @KFC_UK that it was “the worst @kfc I’d ever had”. Next day, there was a reply from @KFC_UKICST, under the KFC logo, asking me to direct message to them. I did. Mistake Number One.

Next, I received a direct message asking for my phone number, so that they could “escalate this with our customer relations team”. I sent it. Mistake Number Two.

Then I got a phone call from a man saying that he was from KFC, offering a refund. I gave him my email and postal address. Mistake Number Three.

Finally, he asked me to set up a genuine Remitly money transfer account, and gave me a password to use. This seemed an over-complicated way for KFC to organise its refunds. But the account that he directed me to had my name on it. (He had, of course, swiftly set it up using my email, phone number, postal address, and his password.) He said that he’d use this to send £100 — refund plus compensation — to my debit card.

Fortunately, I’d bought the meal with a credit card. So, I insisted on using that — not my bank debit card, as he had requested. I did not give him the credit-card number, but typed it direct into my newly downloaded Remitly app. He plausibly talked me through the next steps. The £100 was apparently going from me to me. But it was about to go “in KES”. It suddenly dawned on me that this meant Kenyan shillings. I terminated the call and cancelled the credit card.

In just one year, one in 17 adults is a victim of fraud, the Government’s 2023 Crime Survey reports. Fraud now accounts for more than 40 per cent of crime in England and Wales — and 80 per cent of that starts on Facebook, Google, Instagram, X, TikTok, etc. Many people lose far more than £100.

Big Tech last year signed a voluntary code to remove fraudulent adverts from the web. But these firms have no incentive to take the fraudsters offline. My fraudster is still on X.

Before the election, Labour drafted plans to make tech companies liable to reimburse victims of online fraud — particularly authorised-push-payment (APP) fraud, in which victims are tricked into sending money to fraudsters from their bank accounts. That’s what cost British people £460 million last year. It’s time those plans were put into law.