Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 224 posts

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#21

Post by Nextgrid »

simonvc wrote: post #11

How is the world going to balance instant low friction commerce with the need to prevent instant low friction fraud... I don't think anyone has answers, it's a problem that will affect crypto payments as well as Fiat payments.. I hoped Confirmation of Payee would help, but the massive increase in APP fraud in the last 12 months seems to dispel that notion.. Maybe the answer is money that doesn't settle instantly.. Ki…

> Maybe all payments take 2 weeks to settle

I'm not sure how that would help with regards to APP fraud. APP fraud is possible because scammers are successfully able to social-engineer people into sending their money away despite the various warnings (including on the payments UI in bank apps, or - in the US where this scam uses gift cards - to not tell the cashier or the bank what you're buying the gift cards for). I would expect the same social-engineering to be able to convince the user to not raise the alarm during the 2 week cooldown period.

I think the problem with APP fraud is a lack of user education (and maybe consequences - users expect the bank to always make them whole and so don't take security seriously) as well as insufficient enforcement on the other side - not enough is being done to prevent scammers from operating (why is it still possible for them to robocall and spoof UK numbers? why is there no AML/KYC equivalent before being able to place calls?) and getting away with it.

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#22

Post by dazc »

rwmj wrote: post #7
samhw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem is that this statistic is nearly meaningless. If I run a bank scam, I might have 500k victims, but it won't take as many police to investigate as 500k rapes or murders or kidnappings would. This is comparing apples with oranges.

Practically what happens if you're defrauded is your local police force will direct you to Action Fraud ( https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ ) run by the City of London, who will note it down for "intelligence" but otherwise appear to do nothing whatsoever. Which is not too surprising - according to Wikipedia they have 80 staff. Edit: The reviews of Action Fraud speak for themselves: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/…

Trustpilot - oh the irony!

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#23

Post by robotmay »

dazc wrote: post #18
robotmay wrote: post #16

Ooh we're still the capital of something. Personally I think this comes down to ineffective education in many cases. Yes, some of these scams are getting quite impressively advanced, and they tend to target older people who are declining in cognitive ability, but so often the victims are absolutely unwilling to admit they were a bit stupid. It's always someone else's fault, like the bank, or the police, or Facebook,…

'Maybe our curious mix of laziness, stupidity, superiority complex, and greed combine to make us the perfect targets.' Or, maybe, our good manners?

Hah yes I was trying to think of a way of describing that - our inability to be rude to people, or speak up about something that seems wrong. That should certainly be added to the list.

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#24

Post by IshKebab »

Ultimately you can't really stop people from falling for con men, but I do feel part of the blame lies with banks and other institutions for normalising out-of-the-blue phone calls.

How would you know a call from the bank about fraudulent transactions was fake? They do that! I've even had legitimate calls from them where they refuse to pass my security questions because of data protection. Pure madness.

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#25

Post by Nextgrid »

jonatron wrote: post #19

Part of the problem is too many databases have been compromised. If a scammer calls up and knows all the victim's details, the scammer is much more convincing and the victim is much more likely to be fooled. As for why the UK is a hot spot, I could guess it's to do with the phone system? I get loads of spam calls, but I have no way to find out what company or person the caller phone numbers are used by.

I think the UK is a hot spot because its population speaks English, which means the same scammers that target the US can easily broaden their target market.

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#26

Post by robotmay »

jonatron wrote: post #19

Part of the problem is too many databases have been compromised. If a scammer calls up and knows all the victim's details, the scammer is much more convincing and the victim is much more likely to be fooled. As for why the UK is a hot spot, I could guess it's to do with the phone system? I get loads of spam calls, but I have no way to find out what company or person the caller phone numbers are used by.

Yeah spam calls are a nuisance in this country. Oddly I've gotten far fewer recently. My technique for answering unknown numbers seems to get me removed from a lot of lists:

Pick up the phone, but stay silent. If it's an auto-dialler, it usually disconnects automatically after 4 seconds, and seemingly gets you removed from the list (as either a dead line or a machine I guess). Sometimes this catches legitimate call centres, but I probably didn't want to talk to them either.

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#27

Post by phreeza »

blfr wrote: post #6
Johnyma22 wrote: post #5

Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals. Some reasons why Brits might be so so vulnerable: * Major: English speaking so common to be targeted from less affluent ex-commonwealth countries. * Major: Ageing population have most of the wealth. * Major: Lots of vulnerable victims online and relatively high social media engagement. * Major: Little fear of retaliation (other than Jim Browning). The UK is havi…

Why would brexit impact police interactions with other commonwealth countries. Or even global policing.

Commonwealth should be unaffected, but if the perpetrator is in the EU, i guess it could be because British police can no longer access the Shengen information system (SIS) database, or issue European Arrest Warrants (EAW).

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#28

Post by franga2000 »

Johnyma22 wrote: post #5

Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals. Some reasons why Brits might be so so vulnerable: * Major: English speaking so common to be targeted from less affluent ex-commonwealth countries. * Major: Ageing population have most of the wealth. * Major: Lots of vulnerable victims online and relatively high social media engagement. * Major: Little fear of retaliation (other than Jim Browning). The UK is havi…

Yeah, Jim Browning definitely needs to go teach law enforcement how to do their job, preferably in exchange for the biggest consulting cheque the world has ever seen.

Ths problem, as always, is that they don't actually want to do that. They'd rather stay incompetent because it lets them let criminals off more easily. We have the same problem where I live but with illegal work for often far below minimum wage. The cops and tax inspectors keep saying they're understaffed, underfunded and undertrained to do anything about the problem, yet two journalism students have been able to catch and report more cases of illegal working conditions than the inspectors do in one year.

I used to wonder why, until I saw one of the main white collar cops in the city having a beer with the dude that I know for a fact regularly pays people minimum wage then has them give him half of it back in cash or they're fired. I asked around and it turns out they're childhood friends so he lets him do whatever. And we're not even close to the higher half of the corruption index! I can't imagine how things work in a country that's worse off...

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#29

Post by robotmay »

IshKebab wrote: post #24

Ultimately you can't really stop people from falling for con men, but I do feel part of the blame lies with banks and other institutions for normalising out-of-the-blue phone calls. How would you know a call from the bank about fraudulent transactions was fake? They do that! I've even had legitimate calls from them where they refuse to pass my security questions because of data protection. Pure madness.

Yeah NatWest are majorly guilty of this. They used to phone me with a script that was like:

NW: "Hello, am I speaking to ?"

Me: "Who's asking?"

NW: "I'm calling from the NatWest fraud team, we'd like to verify your transactions. First we need to ask some security questions: what is your account number?"

Me: :|

Online-only banks like Monzo/Starling are better at this aspect - they never seem to phone anyone, which at this point I'd consider a security feature.

Re: An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

#30

Post by Nextgrid »

lol768 wrote: post #8

All the major banks offer Confirmation of Payee nowadays. Why are people still falling victim to APP?

I had an APP scam attempt where I intentionally played their game (by providing fake details) to see how it would go. They were claiming I owed taxes and a legal case was underway that I could resolve by paying said taxes but I'd need to pay the money to the court-appointed lawyer/public defender (whose name & account details they provided me) and not HMRC.
Post reply on HN