With 45% of UK households connected to the internet and two-thirds of the country's population having mobile phones, the fraudsters are now given new opportunities "without having to knock on a door", the DTI said in its statement.
Scams are often designed to dupe the recipient into dialling a premium rate phone line. In one such scam, dealt with by telephone regulator ICSTIS, mobile users received text messages saying "I fancy you" and they were invited to find out who the sender was by calling a premium rate number without sufficient information about call charges and how the service operated.
In another scam, unsolicited e-mails claimed to be from someone who had seen the recipient's details on a dating site and implied that the recipient had been corresponding with the sender for some time. After several e-mails the sender invited the recipient to contact by calling a dating line operating on a premium rate number.
According to the DTI, some people reported that they received the same text message up to 40 times a day. The DTI said it is encouraging people to report scams so that action can be taken to crack down on the perpetrators.