How to fight back against online scammers: Rocio Concha

Our experts found ads purporting to be from major retail brands, investment scams and even ‘recovery’ scams, scammers claiming that they can help you to get back the money you lost, which callously target previous victims. Many of these ads will use the faces of famous celebrities in order to add a veneer of plausibility, despite them having nothing to do with the ads.

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Other types of scams are perhaps more obscure but no less pernicious. For example, ‘scamscriptions’, where fraudsters lock people into recurring payment traps for certain products and services after making an initial one-off payment. A Which? investigation found several examples of advert cloaking - which is when dishonest websites camouflage their content to evade detection – even though this is strictly banned by advertising platforms.

It can take victims months or even years to realise that they are continuing to pay these companies. Concerningly, we’re finding that these types of scams are on the rise.

With so many variations - there simply isn’t enough space here to detail all the different types of scams we have heard of - it can be easy to feel jaded. However targeted the fraudsters’ approach, the end goal is always the same: to extract personal information and ultimately money from the victim.

Despite our increasing awareness of scams, the level of sophistication deployed by the fraudsters is only going in one direction. Even experts can get caught out. As the i reported last week, the chief executive of First Direct bank fell victim to a scam.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence will provide benefits for consumers, but it will also further blur the line between real and fake, making it harder to detect scams and riskier to click on any link you are not totally confident about.

So the question becomes, how do we fight back against fraud and to turn the tide? To do so means several actors coming together to play their parts - from government departments to social media giants, big banks, the online advertising industry and telecoms firms.

Thanks to Which? campaigning, there have already been reasons to be cheerful. The Online Safety Act should, once the media regulator Ofcom finalises its code of practices, require platforms to do more to prevent us from seeing the kind of fraudulent content on social media platforms and search engines Which? highlighted.

When it comes to getting our money back after falling victim to authorised push payment fraud, banks and payment providers will soon be compelled to reimburse innocent victims if they did not act with gross negligence.

But with victims continuing to lose life-changing sums of money to this cruel crime, we think tackling fraud should be a national priority.

The government should appoint a dedicated fraud minister to bring together all of the industries to share data and best practices on how to deal with fraudsters.

In the longer term, the next government should consider plugging the current gaps in legislation where fraudsters will still be able to reach consumers at scale.

Meanwhile, consumers can sign up to Which?’s free Scam Alerts Service to stay informed on the latest scams.

Rocio Concha is ​Director of Policy and Advocacy for Which?