Category: The Authorities

Take Five Stop Fraud

https://takefive-stopfraud.org.uk

Financial Fraud Action UK is part of UK Finance and is responsible for leading the collective fight against financial fraud on behalf of the UK payments industry. The membership includes banks, credit, debit and charge card issuers, and card payment acquirers in the UK.

They provide a forum for members to work together on non-competitive issues relating to financial fraud. The  primary function is to facilitate collaborative activity between industry participants and with other partners committed to fighting fraud.

Financial fraud losses in the UK totalled £768.8 million in 2016. FFA UK and Her Majesty’s Government believe  encouraging people to take a moment to stop and think can make a difference.

Many people may already know the dos and don’ts of financial fraud- that no-one should ever ask them for their PIN or full password, or ever make them feel pressured into moving money to a ‘safe account’. But, it can be easy to forget this when in a hurry.

After all, trusting people on their word is something everyone tends to do instinctively. If someone says they’re from your bank or a trusted organisation, why wouldn’t you believe them?

Take Five is a national awareness campaign led by FFA UK backed by the Government and delivered with and through a range of partners in the UK payments industry, financial services firms, law enforcement agencies and others.

It urges you to stop and consider whether the situation is genuine – to stop and think if what you’re being told really makes sense.

What FFA UK does

  • Sponsor the Dedicated Card and Payments Crime Unit, an operational police unit, with a national remit.
  • Manage the Industry Strategic Threat Management Process, which provides an up-to-the-minute picture of the threat landscape.
  • Deliver UK-wide awareness campaigns to inform customers about threats and how to stay safe.
  • Manage intelligence-sharing through the industry fraud intelligence hub (Financial Fraud Bureau) and the Fraud Intelligence Sharing System (FISS) which feeds intelligence to police and other agencies in support of law enforcement activity.
  • Inform commentators and policy-makers through a press office and public affairs function.
  • Provide expert security assessments of new technology, as well as the impact of new legislation and regulation.
  • Publish the official fraud losses for the UK payments industry, as well as acting as the definitive source of industry fraud statistics and data.

All of this sounds useful in the fight against fraud.

Take care.

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Bank Transfer Scam Compensation

In 2016, Which? Consumer Magazine launched a Super Complaint to the Payment Systems Regulator. Which? is one of only a few organisations empowered by government to raise super complaints on behalf of the general public.

The super-complaint said:- “We think banks need to do more to protect customers who are tricked into transferring money to a fraudster.”

Which? thinks banks should shoulder more responsibility for money lost to bank transfer scams. Customers who lose money due to scams via direct debit or credit and debit cards are reimbursed, for example, but not bank transfers. This would give banks an incentive to develop better mechanisms to prevent the fraud in the first place.

Which? Say “You only have to read the harrowing real life stories in our super-complaint to realise that these scams are often so sophisticated that it’s impossible for people to be savvy enough to completely protect themselves. And the people being scammed are not only the stereotypical vulnerable groups; they are often financially and technologically literate.”

Which? did some research by asking more than 1,000 members of the public if they could spot the difference between real and spoof emails and found that 50% of people were fooled by these sophisticated scam emails.

At last check, 359,823 people had signed the petition about this matter.

The Payment Systems Regulator has announced it is consulting on plans to reimburse victims of bank transfer scams. From the 1 January 2018, people who’ve been victims of a bank transfer scam will only need to deal with their bank when making a complaint – not the bank the fraudster was with. This means that banks will provide access to a dedicated team of staff trained to deal with scams.

However, the Regulator is also consulting on a reimbursement scheme for people who are tricked into transferring money to a fraudster when their bank failed to do enough to protect them. This is very good news.

The Regulator’s actions in response to the super-complaint will go a long way to tackling these scams. However, if banks are going to solve this problem and really protect their customers, they must also look at what other steps they can take to stop these scams from happening in the first place.

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Netsafe in New Zealand

https://www.netsafe.org.nz/

Netsafe is New Zealand’s independent, non-profit online safety organisation. It provides online safety help, support, expertise and education to people in New Zealand. But that information is useful to people of every country.

Netsafe was founded in 1998 to help New Zealand internet users stay safe online.

After noticing the growing influence of technology in their respective areas, the New Zealand Police, Ministry of Education and several not for profits teamed up with telecommunication organisations and IT industry partners to create an independent body focussed on online safety.

Together they created the Internet Safety Group which was rebranded Netsafe in 2008.

Netsafe was given the remit to build an internet safety organisation that didn’t scare people away from technology, but instead encouraged people to adopt it by promoting the tools and techniques they could use to minimise their online risks.

Today Netsafe is an internationally renowned organisation with an unrelenting focus on online safety practice.

As digital technology use grows and evolves at a rapid pace in society, it becomes more important for Netsafe to help people manage and reduce the risk of online harm, so that they feel more confident being online.

Netsafe’s remit is wider than just online security. They aim to cover  Online Bullying & Harassment,  Scams,  Security,  Parenting,  Business.  Educators and  Young People.

There is a reporting tool for anyone wishing to report an online incident that happened to themselves or someone close to them.

There is a wealth of information about common online scams and those in New Zealand are pretty much the same as in other advanced countries. (Developing countries typically face different types of scams.)

There is a lot of security advice but also advice for parents and education workers and sections for young people.

This is a great service offered in New Zealand but also useful to everyone, wherever they live, as scams and other online problems exist the world over.

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Online Watch Link

Online Watch Link known as OWL is an online service for Neighbourhood Watches, the Police and associated bodies involved in preventing and stopping crime.

It’s designed to keep people informed of what’s going on locally relating to crime prevention for both the public and the Police.

It’s used by a lot of the Neighbourhood Watches across the UK but not all so if you input your postcode in the Find a Watch scheme box on the home page – you may well get the message “Sorry that postcode is not covered by OWL”.

OWL has been featured on Crimewatch and is growing in popularity.

The website is https://www.owl.co.uk/

Q. How does OWL help?

Local authorities send out alerts via OWL about crime and local issues in your area. It can help to prevent burglary, find missing people, makes people feel safer and catch suspects.

OWL Has National Police Approval

There is some advice on the website relating to various categories of crime, but the website is all about the OWL service.

Searching the Internet shows that many communities have incorporated OWL into their local information websites and neighbourhood watches.

Owl was created by a British company based in Hatfield.

It seems a useful tool in crime prevention and the more communities and Watches that us it the more useful it will become.

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The Banks and Your Tax Residence

You may receive a strange letter from your bank or from a bank you used to have an account with, anytime from 2015 onwards.

There are endless phishing emails and calls from scammers pretending to be your bank. Mostly these are very amateurish and easily spotted but some are more sophisticated, look genuine and are harder to recognise as fake.

But the banks are sending out these unexpected letters about your tax residence and they are genuine.

These letters are in response to a piece of legislation called “Common Reporting Standards” which requires all banks to confirm their customers place of tax residence and report that to HMRC.

If you receive one of these letters, it may just mean that your account had an overseas phone number or address included or any other reason to question your tax residence.

If you are no longer a customer of the bank but did have an account with them since January 2015 then they have to ask the questions, even if the balance on the account is zero.

This is all part of a global crackdown on tax evasion.

If you do receive such a letter and you are unsure, call the bank in question using the telephone number listed on the back of your bank card or on its website.

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The Wangiri Phone Scam

This is the call back scam, which has risen to epidemic levels in Ireland.

Ireland’s phone operators say that tens of thousands of scam mobile phone calls are sweeping across Ireland in an “unprecedented” surge.

The calls, often have international prefixes including +231 (Liberia), +269 (The Comoros Islands), or +43 (Austria) and are intended to trick people into phoning back at premium rates.

The numbers are high cost international numbers and the fraudsters will get paid for each call back. The fraudsters will try to keep you on the line for as many minutes as possible.

The scam is known as a ‘wangiri’ call, (means one ring) because the mobile phone typically rings just once or twice.

The scammers hope that people will automatically call back without looking too closely at the number.

The telecoms watchdog admits there is no easy way to identify such calls but advise not calling back unless you know the number that called you and certainly do not call back if left a blank message.

Some mobile operators do block these scam numbers as they are identified and that stops them  from calling their customers and blocks their customers from returning the call.

If your receive such calls, then notify your phone company of the calling numbers.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.