Challenge to reduce ‘industrial scale’ of online fraud

Commenting on the Online Safety Bill announced as part of today’s Queen’s Speech Sarah Pennells, consumer finance specialist at Royal London, said:

“The Online Safety Bill is aimed at making the UK the safest place in the world to be online and the inclusion of paid-for ads in the Bill is to be welcomed. However, online scams and fraud are currently being committed on an industrial scale; whether that’s investment scams, pension scams or phishing scams aimed at harvesting personal details, and criminals have found the internet to be a lucrative space to operate in.

“Gone are the days when online scam adverts would be littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors – today’s fraudsters are very convincing, and their methods are very effective. The National Cyber Security Centre took down a record 2.7 million scams from the internet last year but, despite this success, many people were scammed out of their life savings or pension. Online fraud has devastating financial and emotional consequences for individuals, but also reduces confidence in the wider financial services industry.

“It’s encouraging that social media platforms and search engines will play their part and we hope that the regulator, Ofcom, has the resources it needs if there’s to be a meaningful reduction in online fraud.”