Out-of-date warnings of a postal scam are frightening householders in the latest “urban myth” to do the rounds by email and text message.

Sussex Police has passed on warnings based on a chain email which describes a scam shut down in 2005.

The myth is one of a clutch of warnings - some entirely fictitious, some with a basis in truth - which are being continually recycled.

In 2005 the premium-rate phoneline regulator PhonepayPlus, then known as ICSTIS, shut down a scam by a company called PDS, or Parcel Delivery Service.

The firm was putting cards through people’s doors saying they had missed a parcel and should call an 0906 number to arrange to collect it.

In fact people who called the number ended up paying Studio Telecom, a firm based in Belize in Central America, £1.50 a minute.

The email warning - which resurfaces every October and circulates over the Christmas period - urges people to call Royal Mail on a given number to report the scam.

But despite no new victims having been caught out by the scam, the warnings have sparked a flurry of calls to Royal Mail.