00:00 Before COVID you had the situation where you'd heard about someone who'd received one of
00:06 those scam emails, or you'd heard about people receiving an SMS that told you to go to a
00:13 certain link or told you that something had been frozen or you were in trouble. So now
00:16 we have much higher frequency of these things taking place online. Instead of it being that
00:23 you'd heard of someone who'd experienced one of these things, I think many of us receive
00:28 phone calls from a recorded message or text messages that claim to be from customs or
00:34 tax quite frequently now.
00:37 Fraud accounts for around 40% of all crime in England and Wales, with an estimated cost
00:42 of fraud to society sitting at £6.8 billion, according to the Crime Survey for England
00:47 and Wales year ending September 2023. Scams that target people online have increased in
00:53 prevalence since the coronavirus pandemic, say experts like Simon, who works as the head
00:57 of fraud for tech company Onfido.
01:00 Now it's come to the point where government's actually starting a campaign. And I think
01:04 this is a great campaign because the biggest problem we have with fraud is awareness. It's
01:09 people not being aware because they're not switched onto the same social media channels
01:14 as other people. So the most vulnerable people are those who are the least aware. And they're
01:20 probably the most naive in these situations as well.
01:23 A particular concern is that fraudsters, they're always coming up with new ways to try and
01:28 catch us out. How can we try our best to sort of stay on top of things and avoid harm?
01:33 If something is too good to be true, it generally is. And that's how these things work. So there's
01:38 going to be an unsolicited call or message, something that's come out of the blue. And
01:45 it will either entice you to some amazing offer that's going on, that sounds amazing,
01:52 it's just fantastic. You'll get this amount of return. The money comes back so quickly.
01:57 It'll probably be supported by some kind of story where someone says, I did it and look
02:01 how well off I am. And what we're seeing at the moment is people using the faces of celebrities
02:06 to try and endorse these products, which are just scams.
02:10 So it's an unsolicited contact of some nature that has a link held within it. And that link
02:16 is going to be the key. So that's how they get you to move away from something that you
02:20 know and can trust to where they want you to be.
02:23 Fraud affected one in 17 adults last year and one in five businesses over a three-year
02:28 period. Yet still, for many people, feelings of shame or embarrassment follow. The advice
02:34 from the experts is to always tell someone if you've fallen victim to consumer fraud,
02:39 as this is what keeps other people from doing the same.
02:41 I think one of the best places you can reach out to is Action Fraud. So that's actionfraud.police.uk.
02:49 That's a great place for reporting crime. It helps other people. It means you can get
02:53 all the details down and then alerts can be sent out to people and it'd be made public
02:57 so everyone's aware of it. And it may even be that they can help you in retrieving some
03:01 of those funds that you've lost as well.
03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments