Technology, telecoms and social media companies should take more responsibility for stopping scams as the problem reaches “epidemic proportions”,

Scam ‘epidemic’: Big tech firms must join fight, says Nationwide chief

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2021-09-27 09:30:03

Technology, telecoms and social media companies should take more responsibility for stopping scams as the problem reaches “epidemic proportions”, the UK’s biggest building society has warned.

Cases of authorised push-payment fraud, where victims are persuaded to pay money into a criminal’s account, have risen sharply since the Covid pandemic began, with banks last week revealing that losses from such scams were up by 71% in the first half of the year.

In many of these, customers are persuaded that their account has been compromised, or that they are buying into a good investment, and are asked to transfer cash into an account elsewhere.

Nationwide said that every day it was supporting customers who had fallen victim to a scam. The society’s economic crime director, Stuart Skinner, said: “We’re at epidemic proportions – for my team, the majority of their time is spent on scams.”

The society has launched a scam checker service, where members can call at any time of day or night to talk about whether a potential payment is legitimate.