.svg)
Two-thirds of all online shopping scams now start on Facebook and Instagram, according to new research from Lloyds Banking Group.
Purchase scams that start on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram are expected to cost UK consumers more than £27m this year alone, according to new analysis by Lloyds Banking Group.
Lloyds, which is one of the UK’s largest retail banking groups, said that social media platforms are fuelling a surge in online shopping scams.
Someone falls for a scam on these platforms every seven minutes, according to the research.
“Social media has become the Wild West of online shopping in recent years, with very few checks in place to verify who is selling what,” said Liz Ziegler, fraud prevention director at Lloyds Banking Group.
Ziegler added that this has left consumers “increasingly exposed to ruthless fraudsters”.
“Hundreds of new victims [are] targeted every day and tens of millions of pounds are flowing to organised crime gangs each year,” she said.
When approached for comment by VIXIO, a spokesperson for Meta said: “This is an industry-wide issue and scammers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to defraud people in a range of ways including email, SMS, and offline.
“We don’t want anyone to fall victim to these criminals which is why our platforms have systems to block scams, financial services advertisers now have to be FCA authorised and we run consumer awareness campaigns on how to spot fraudulent behaviour.”
The spokesperson further told VIXIO that users can also report this content in a few simple clicks and that the company works with the police to support their investigations.
A variety of voices in the UK, including the government’s new fraud tsar, Anthony Browne, have long said that more work must be done to ensure tech companies prevent scams from taking place.
The financial sector has become increasingly vocal about the need for tech companies to do more to counter fraud.
For example, UK Finance warned last year that tech companies need to work with the financial sector to help bring down fraud cases, as “criminal gangs simply bypass the advanced security measures banks have in place and instead directly target the customer, usually outside the confines of the banking system”.
In the UK’s Fraud Strategy, which the Home Office published last month, the government committed to ensuring that “every part of the system is incentivised to take fraud seriously”.
For example, it is expected that the tech sector will need to put in place extra protections for their customers and introduce tough penalties for those who do not via the Online Safety Bill.
The government has further said that large tech companies will need to make it as simple as possible for users to report fraud on their platforms.
Furthermore, tech companies will be incentivised by naming and shaming work by the government, which has said that they will “shine a light” on which platforms are the safest.
“Banks have been at the forefront of tackling the epidemic of scams, but they cannot fight it alone,” reiterated Ziegler.
“It’s high time tech companies stepped up to share responsibility for protecting their own customers. This means stopping scams at source and contributing to refunds when their platforms are used to defraud innocent victims.”
