The image above is part of an advertising campaign being launched tomorrow to raise awareness about cybercrime. In the advert an unsavory looking man slowly adopts the persona of an unsuspecting women, as she enters details into an online shopping site. Soon the fraudster is wearing her nail varnish, her earrings and finally taking out a loan in her name. It’s a clever reminder that details we enter online are not always safe, and it comes just a week after Sky Investigations revealed ID Fraud on loans was up 58%.
The Home Office campaign centers around a new study that finds that women aged between 35 and 55 feel helpless against the determined fraudster. Research found that 56 per cent of women surveyed were unsure whether they had the technological skills to help protect themselves from fraud in the online world.
But it’s not just the public who need a kick when it comes to cybercrime. Banks, Trading Standards, the OFT and the police have all been caught sleeping over this rapidly developing problem. In previous investigations where we’ve uncovered online or telephone fraud, the perpetrators sometimes continue to thrive even after we’ve alerted the authorities to their activities.
Websites that are taken down are sometimes almost instantly replaced and somehow back at the top of Google listings. When it comes to policing the issue there’s often a resignation that the criminals are beyond their reach. Often they are because they’re based in far away countries, working from internet-cafes running one scam after another. Cybercrime has become the criminal challenge of our times.
The financial services sector could do more too. It is unfortunate that one response to the problem was to try to earn a buck from it. Insurance companies, assisted by the banks, started selling ID Fraud Protection. A product that came in the top ten of the Which? “Most Useless Financial Products” list, because it was often selling protection the customer already had. The leading provider CPP is itself being investigated by the Financial Services Authority for mis-selling ID Protection.
So it’s a minefield out there. Tomorrow’s Campaign titled “The Devil’s in Your Details” warns of scams such as on-line shopping, property investment and account takeover fraud. They estimate these scams alone cost the UK over £4.2 billion a year.
In another advert a scruffy man sits down next to a woman on a park bench. He says he’s from her bank and he wants her to confirm her password. It’s a reference to phishing emails and phone calls where scammers masquerade as trustworthy businesses in an effort to gain information.
But it’s no wonder that sometimes punters get confused between the two.
Source: http://blogs.news.sky.com/skyinvestigates/Post:9de4d81c-d8b5-4cb0-a4b8-e622a1214335
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