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'IT WAS SO SCARY...NOW I AM MORE AWARE'

By Laura Shannon, Daily Mail, London on

Published in Senior Living Features

OFFICIAL figures due out this week will show that fraud and hacking is now the most common crime in England and Wales. Reported cases of fraud are running at a frightening two million a year -- with a staggering £2million a day being lost to criminals.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee recently concluded that Government, the financial services industry and the police are failing to keep pace with this significant threat to consumers' financial security. That leaves the onus on individuals to protect themselves from scammers.

ONE of the biggest anti-fraud consumer awareness campaigns hits the road tomorrow in a new bid to highlight common scams.

The Take Five To Stop Fraud initiative will feature a giant yellow sofa travelling around the country, on which shoppers will be invited to sit and share their experience of being targeted by crooks. The key message is for people to stop and think before agreeing to demands from official-sounding strangers in phone calls, emails or texts.

Tony Blake is a senior fraud prevention officer for the City of London Police and is involved in Take Five. He says: 'We cannot arrest enough people to eliminate the problem. It can only be tackled through education and awareness.'

Blake wants people to talk more about the danger of fraud. He says: 'If nothing else, talk -- to elderly relatives, teenagers and colleagues -- because the more we know, the more difficult it is for fraudsters.'

The sofa will travel to Essex, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, respectively, in the awareness campaign jointly run by the Home Office, banks and financial companies.

Take Five has also asked for input from experts such as David Lewis, a psychologist who specialises in consumer behaviour.

He says fraud is rampant because perpetrators can be extremely cunning, while most people are basically trusting.

He says: 'Professional fraudsters are well versed in the art of making others believe their pitch. They use social engineering and sophisticated techniques to trick us.'

He adds: 'We also like to believe the best of people. It can take a lot of contrary evidence to make us abandon this initial sense of trust.

'When faced with a stranger apparently "bearing gifts", you must challenge that person right from the start.'

* PUSH PAYMENTS

HERE, victims are persuaded to send money to a fraudster's account. As obvious a scam as this may sound, the criminals are so convincing that £100million was lost in this way in the first six months of last year -- with each consumer losing on average £3,000 and each firm £21,000.

One popular method is for fraudsters to pose as a police officer or an employee from a bank's fraud department. They may already have some accurate personal information prior to making contact, such as who you bank with.

The person claims there is suspicious activity on your account and advises you to transfer funds to a 'safe' account.

This transfer request is likely to come after a series of harmless steps designed to gain your trust and subdue any initial suspicions.

An alternative method involves an interception of emails between you and a professional you must pay, such as a builder or solicitor.

An email asks you to transfer funds to a new account -- which belongs to a scammer. But the email appears to be from the person you have been liaising with.

If someone you are due to pay tells you of an account change, call them on a number you know to be correct. Or ask them face to face.

* SURRENDERING INFORMATION

 

SOMETIMES calls, texts or emails look to be from a well-known firm or your bank. But they are designed to steal personal information.

A caller may claim there is fraudulent activity on your account and while going through 'security steps' will ask for your login and PIN.

Similarly, links in emails or texts, once clicked on, lead to a website that harvests card details or bank account information. Action Fraud, the national fraud and cyber-crime reporting centre, warns that fake emails offering Sainsbury's gift vouchers are on the rise.

Other organisations often copied include Revenue & Customs and retail giants Amazon and eBay.

* AN INFECTED COMPUTER

CLICKING on links in emails, or downloading attachments, can infect a computer with spyware.

Giving a fraudster remote access to your computer will do the same. They may claim to be your broadband provider offering to fix or speed up your internet connection.

A virus sits on your device unseen and traces what you type when logging into online banking -- the equivalent of leaving the door to your bank account wide open.

FAKE texts from NatWest are circulating that contain a link sending customers to a website that collects personal banking information.

Using technology known as 'number spoofing', fraudsters make the message look genuine, even inserting it into a thread of genuine messages from the bank.

Sometimes a text is genuine even if it triggers suspicion. Jeremy Cutten faced such a quandary when he had a text from his bank saying someone had tried to take £70 on ten occasions to pay for video games.

If he recognised the payments he was to ignore the message, otherwise he should text back 'No'. Jeremy, 51, who lives in Hove, East Sussex, with his partner Lisa, replied 'No' and received a call from his bank within seconds, during which he cancelled his bank card.

After putting the phone down, it occurred to him the text and call may have been fraudulent. So he visited his local branch to check and was reassured all was well.

Jeremy, a contract manager in building and construction, says: 'It was scary -- I do not know how fraudsters got my card details.

'I stay in hotels regularly for work and may have connected to unsecure wi-fi. It has made me more aware of how easy it is to be defrauded.'

A key difference between the genuine text he received from his bank and a scam version is that it did not ask him to click on a link to share personal information or to call a number he did not recognise. It simply asked him to ignore or reply with the word 'No'.

During the follow-up call, at no stage was he asked to share sensitive details such as his PIN number or password. Nor was he asked to move his money to a different account, which would be an indication of fraud.

(c)2018 the Daily Mail (London)

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(c) Daily Mail, London

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