Beware Scammers

I received a call from someone saying they were from HM Revenue & Customs stating that i owed £1000 in back taxes and the only way to stop my immediate arrest was to pay immediately so i played along and kept them waiting while i 'looked for my card' but was actually watching TV and after 30 mins i picked my phone back up and asked if they were still there, which they were, so laughed and hung up but many people do seem to fall for scams via phone, email or on Social Media.
TV is full of shows which expose scams like these but there were over a million reports to Action Fraud last year with millions of pounds in total lost to scammers so awareness is still not high enough but the Scammers are very good at what they do so said the guy at work who works on one of those shows.  
'They use a wide range of psychological tricks to confuse you and keep you off balance' he said and explained the main ones which many fall foul of.
They often impersonate people in authority such as government officials, police or expert professionals and our instinct is to obey authority figures and do as we’re told and another favourite is to pressure you into something by putting a time limit on it and provoking the fear of missing out in us because nobody wants to lose out on something we could otherwise have.
Knowing that immediately asking for a large amount can immediately raise suspicions, the scammer sometimes initiate contact with a small, easy request followed by a steady flow of additional requests because psychologically, once we have agreed to a small request you will agree as the requests get ramped up because once you’ve invested time into something, we are less willing to just walk away or end the interaction without a result.  
The opposite is beginning with a huge request that is easy to refuse and then they follow it up with a much smaller ask that seems reasonable in comparison.
Reciprocity is the key to the next one because when someone does something for us, we feel a indebted to return the favor and another is the hustle, where the scammer will actually let you make some real money from the which earns them your trust and once you actually make some small amount of profit, you’re more willing to risk increasing amounts because in your mind, you’ve already seen 'proof' that it’s legitimate.
The best rule of thumb then is it it seems to good to be true, it probably is