The Great British fraud fightback
The latest UK crime survey estimates there were 5.6m cases of cyber fraud last year, accounting for almost half of all crimes and costing the UK an estimated £11bn.
New Barclays’ research has also shown that younger people aged 25 to 34 are twice as likely to be victims of online fraud as older generations.
A new Barclays £10m advertising campaign has been launched to alert people to the risk of online fraud
To help combat this Barclays has launched a new Digital Safety campaign, offering its customers the tools to stay safe online. As part of the drive Barclays are:
- Offering customers the option to instantly turn off remote purchases on their card and set daily ATM withdrawal limits via the Barclays Mobile Banking app.
- Hosting digital safety teach-ins to individuals and businesses via the network of 17,000 Digital Eagles
- Leading industry efforts to prevent customers being duped into withdrawing all their cash from branches and handing it to a scammer posing as a trusted person, through a new police hotline for branch colleagues to call
Ashok Vaswani, Chief Executive of Barclays UK, said: “Fraud is often wrongly described as an invisible crime, but the effects are no less damaging to people’s lives. As a society our confidence in using digital technology to shop, pay our bills and connect with others has grown faster than our knowledge of how to do so safely.
This has created a ‘digital safety gap’ which is being exploited by criminals. I believe the need to fight fraud has now become a national resilience issue, and we all need to boost our digital safety levels in order to close the gap.
Advertising campaign
All these activities are being supported by a new £10m advertising campaign to alert people to the risk of fraud including national TV ads. There will also be content targeted towards younger people and in urban areas who statistically are most at risk.
Top three tips to reduce the risk of online fraud
Barclays estimates that if people implemented these three top tips we could help to cut levels of fraud by up to 75%.
- Never give out your full online banking PIN, passcode or password to anyone, even a caller claiming to be from the police or your bank.
- Do not click on any link or open an attachment on any email you receive which is unsolicited.
- Avoid letting someone you do not know have access to your computer, especially remotely.