A warning has gone out to residents of Helston to be on their guard for a phone scam.

A Helston Packet reader, who asked to only be identified as Fred, contacted the paper to say he had answered his landline this morning to an automated message claiming to be from BT.

It stated that his phone line and internet connection were to be disconnected within 24 hours, due to "fraudulent activity", and instructed him to press one to speak to somebody.

Fred instead put down the phone and called up his provider directly, which said the call was not from them and also not from BT.

When Fred called 1471 it was a local dialling code number, but when tried to call it the the number disconnected.

He said he wanted to warn other people not to fall for it, saying: "It was does seem very, very realistic. It gets you worried, thinking your phone is going to go."

What made him suspicious, he said, was that there was a lot of background noise in the message. "It's quite crackly and it sounds like there's a lot of street noise in the background," he added.