HOW TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE FRAUDSTERS AND NOT BECOME THEIR LATEST VICTIM.

Dear Rocio,

I am quite tech-savvy but more and more scams are being sent to me by text or email. I feel like it is only a matter of time before I eventually get caught out. Can’t more be done to stop the fraudsters?

Name and address supplied

Rocio says: Scams are all around us and range from ingenious and absolutely plausible, to the downright ridiculous. Some of the strangest scams Which? encountered last year included “royal membership cards”, promising not only a meet and greet with “the king charharles [sic]” thrice a year, but a selection of regal memorabilia, “free flight tickets”, “two iPhone 14 pro max”, health insurance, “financial assistance” and a minimum wage “from the royal house of England”.

To the above, we can add “£3 laptops”, loans for apparently dead uncles and fake emails purportedly from billionaires, offering free cash giveaways, no strings attached.

While some scam attempts may provoke a smirk, the reality for victims ensnared by these terrible crimes are anything but funny.

Take, for instance, a fraudster who managed to infiltrate an email chain between a solicitor and house buyer, convincing them to send tens of thousands of pounds to the wrong bank account.

Those who fall victim don’t just lose money, but suffer a psychological toll, too.

So, in 2025, businesses that make up vital cogs in the fraud machine – social media giants, banks and payment providers and telecoms firms – should make it their new year’s resolution to strengthen their defences.

For banks and payment providers, this means stepping up and meeting a set of new mandatory reimbursement requirements.

These rules, which came into force in October, should mean victims of bank transfer fraud get their money back if they were not at fault. They could bring an end to years of reimbursement lotteries depending on which firm innocent victims banked with.

New rules will hopefully incentivise banks and payment firms – both sending and receiving – to do more to prevent consumers being duped in the first place.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/money/bills/banks-must-refund-fraud-telephone-companies-1725849For online platforms, where the bulk of scams originate, the key is stopping fraud at source. If a firm can spot and remove a fraudulent advert extolling the virtues of a bogus cryptocurrency scheme, purportedly condoned by a celebrity to add some legitimacy, the pool of users who may see and believe it will remain low.

Alternatively, if the ad is up and allowed to remain on the site for days or weeks, there’s no telling how much damage it could do to users.

The Online Safety Act will give online platforms a responsibility to remove this content, and as part of those laws the communications regulator Ofcom will have the power to hand down multi-million pound fines to firms that fall short of the required standard.

However, Ofcom must speed up the timetable for implementing these directives as, currently, they may not fully come into force until 2027 – leaving consumers vulnerable for longer.

Fraudsters are exploiting an increasingly digital world, which means scams often include more than one platform – capturing a victim on a social network and then requesting they make a bank transfer, for example. So better and more collaborative sharing of intelligence on how scammers operate is required.

There is encouragement. Banks and telecoms firms have recently teamed up to analyse real-time data from mobile networks to identify links between phone calls and fraudulent bank transfers to home in on fraud hot spots. Collaboration like this is vital to strengthening fraud prevention.

Tackling fraud will not be done by one sector alone. The Government must bring together departments that for too long have worked in silos tackling fraud. The fraud minister should publish a meaningful strategy as a matter of urgency, bringing together the tech, banking and telecoms sectors to better protect consumers.

The consequence of inaction means more misery for victims.

Rocio Concha is Which? director of policy and advocacy. To have your question featured on this page, email [email protected]

2025-01-10T07:11:18Z