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An unprecedented wave of online bank fraud is hitting Britain

reuters.com

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

#51

Post by avianlyric »

Nextgrid wrote: post #21
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…

> 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.

It would be interesting to test this. Having read through a number of APP fraud cases, including victim statements. One persistent theme is that the pressure cooker environment that scammers create to get victims to send money is very effective as getting them to ignore warning signs. But after they've sent the money, and the immediate pressure is off, they quickly realise they've been scammed.

I strongly suspect that introducing even short delays of a few hours would be very effective. Especially if the victim is immediately made aware that a delay has been introduced. This give the victim a little time to cool-off and realise that they've been scammed, and then hopefully alert the bank.

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

#52

Post by Retric »

Chris2048 wrote: post #36
phreeza wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's a big if - why would a scammer risk the liability of operating in the EU if they can trivially outsource to somewhere untouchable?

Because criminals operate in every country and the EU has a large and often English speaking population. It’s the same with the US/UK where plenty of scammers operate in each country while targeting the other. Email doesn’t care about national borders, it does care about language.

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

#53

Post by rwmj »

erfgh wrote: post #43
happyflower wrote: post #33

Why can a 78-year old widow's life savings be managed through an online bank system? Bring back local branch offices where people have to manage their high-risk accounts in-person.

Sounds like a business model, you can try it and see what happens.

There's a challenger bank (aka startup) doing exactly that: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8595205/...

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

#54

Post by LatteLazy »

happyflower wrote: post #33

Why can a 78-year old widow's life savings be managed through an online bank system? Bring back local branch offices where people have to manage their high-risk accounts in-person.

Because in person banking services are really really expensive and no one will pay for them.

Because you're not allowed to ban old people from your services.

Because at least some old people use these things successfully and at least some young people get defrauded.

Because UK banks are closed more than they are open (my local NatWest.

People should be able to opt out. But that won't really help as the core issue here is the customers themselves...

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

#55

Post by LatteLazy »

lol768 wrote: post #8

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

They also repeated say in bold "don't send money to people you don't know" and "We will NEVER ask you to transfer cash" and "Once sent money cannot be retrieved" etc.

A lot of very dumb people have 5 or 6 figure cash piles.

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

#56

Post by mdp2021 »

erfgh wrote: post #43
happyflower wrote: post #33

Why can a 78-year old widow's life savings be managed through an online bank system? Bring back local branch offices where people have to manage their high-risk accounts in-person.

Sounds like a business model, you can try it and see what happens.

It is a huge problem if we cannot have vital services because they disappear. No banks given the trends, no cars given the trends, no documents given the trends... (In the terms of, many would not use a computer at all if the only option were UntrustedOS.) You can raise the issue of "more profits the other way", but it does not fully work ("dirt served at the restaurant, cheap and profitful") and an amount of people will remain serviceless.

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

#57

Post by pjc50 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #46
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…

Also worth noting: * UK infrastructure makes number spoofing very easy. * UK banking legislation (and court rulings) put banks in a difficult position: they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime).

I would be interested in knowing which court rulings those are.

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

#58

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Angostura wrote: post #50

I had a long argument with HSBC UK Security a few years ago where I was completely unable to get the to understand they were putting their customers at risk. In the event that something looked strange on your account the 'HSBC Fraud Department' would text you and ask them to call you on a phone number. A phone number that didn't appear anywhere on their website. "We don't want it public. OK,well at least put it on a…

Bank phone numbers should be written on the back of credit/debit cards (and in a lot of countries, they are).

"A fraudulent transaction has been detected on your credit card no. *1234, please call the number written on the back of your card", and you're done.

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

#59

Post by pjc50 »

> "The UK is the hotbed of activity for fraudsters. Currently the UK accounts for about 80% of our global personal fraud losses," it said.

> The NECC's Reed said another problem was that just 1% of policing resources were dedicated to fighting fraud, despite it making up over a third of all crime in England and Wales.

Astonishing, but in some ways not surprising given the Met's ability to cover for colossal failings like the Sarah Everard murder and the "spycops" fiasco.

The political system is .. not in a position to improve this, despite it affecting a lot of the supposedly critical marginal elderly voters.

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

#60

Post by BiteCode_dev »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #58
Angostura wrote: post #50

I had a long argument with HSBC UK Security a few years ago where I was completely unable to get the to understand they were putting their customers at risk. In the event that something looked strange on your account the 'HSBC Fraud Department' would text you and ask them to call you on a phone number. A phone number that didn't appear anywhere on their website. "We don't want it public. OK,well at least put it on a…

Bank phone numbers should be written on the back of credit/debit cards (and in a lot of countries, they are). "A fraudulent transaction has been detected on your credit card no. *1234, please call the number written on the back of your card", and you're done.

Unless the fraudulent transaction is due to the fact you just lost your credit card.
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