Children under 10 are being targeted by social media scammers: Greg Wright

Despite the customary cries of “something must be done” there are alarming signs that the crooks are raking in vast sums across a range of social media platforms which dominate our lives.

New figures suggest social media users caught in financial scams lost nearly £75m to fraudsters in the space of a year. The data obtained from Action Fraud under the Freedom of Information Act by the Good Money Guide website showed users of six popular sites made 3,597 reports of scams in 2022.

The total losses were more than double those reported across the same sites in 2021, when £31.5m was reported as stolen in 2,852 fraud claims, and up from £14.5m in 2020 across 1,828 cases.

The biggest single loss reported among the claims in 2022 was £4m. In 2021 this was £700,000.

Alarmingly, reports were made on behalf of 24 children aged nine and under, and 593 children and teenagers aged 10 to 19. There were 210 involving users aged 70 to 99, which shows the elderly are also vulnerable.

It’s worth pointing out that Action Fraud is a self-reporting site, which means the claims have not necessarily been verified by law enforcement.

Good Money Guide founder Richard Berry said: “It’s easy to stumble across social media posts offering an investment opportunity that seems too good to be true, and in 99 per cent of cases, that’s exactly what it is.

“The criminals often go to great lengths to make their scams look credible – sometimes even ‘cloning’ legitimate investment platforms.”

These will typically look almost identical to the real thing, apart from a small difference in the URL. When unsuspecting investors deposit funds into one of these fake websites, they never see them again.

Last year, Meta revealed it was working with Stop Scams UK to help victims and remove scams at the source. It recently launched Stop. Think. Call., a scams awareness campaign by WhatsApp and the National Trading Standards’ Friends Against Scams campaign, with support from Citizens Advice. It also rolled out a new process requiring financial services advertisers targeting users in the UK to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. However, the latest shocking statistics provide regulators and social media firms with plenty of food for thought. There is clearly much work to be done.

To quote Mr Berry: “Something is going seriously wrong if children under 10 can be conned by these despicable money-grabbing scammers.”

It requires a co-ordinated approach, with tough enforcement measures supported by social media firms. They must be willing to devote vast resources to outwit scammers who could ruin lives.

Greg Wright is the deputy business editor of The Yorkshire Post