The role social media platforms could and should have in combatting fraud

This year, Cifas launched its ‘Fraud Pledges’ – a set of reforms urging the Government to make it a national priority to tackle the fraud epidemic. However, when three-quarters of online fraud begins on social media and online platforms, how do we stop criminals from exploiting innocent individuals when there’s vast opportunity at their fingertips? We believe a good place to start is for social media and online platforms to join the multi-sector response to fraud. 

Our latest guest writer, Dr Elisabeth Carter, of Kingston University London, provides expert insight into how greater engagement in the counter-fraud community can help to keep people safe online. 

The links between fraudulent interactions and the language and tactics of grooming, coercive control and domestic abuse have been established (Hawkswood, Carter and Brown 2022; Carter 2021), and it is against this backdrop that fraud criminals use social media platforms to identify victims, contact them and engage them in communications, hide their true identity and lead them away from relative safety to subject them to financial and psychological harm. 

As recognised in the Online Fraud Charter and by UK Finance (2022), three quarters of all online fraud starts on social media platforms, where individuals who engage in their facilities are at risk of exposure to financial or psychological harm at the hands of organised, professional criminals. It is therefore crucial that these platforms take responsibility and be accountable for making their platform a hostile rather than fertile place for fraud criminals, essential as it disrupts the risk/reward balance, and places more barriers between the criminal and their targets; making fraud a less desirable criminal career both on a conceptual and practical level. 

Further, as it is recognised that Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud losses do not only occur on but are “driven by the abuse of online platforms used by criminals to scam their victims” (UK Finance 2022), those who provide the very means through which such harms are inflicted should be actively responsible for protecting their users in practical terms, and also engage with wider services across the public, private and third sectors, in contributing money and time to cooperatively work towards making these spaces inhabitable for criminals.  

Are we really protecting victims? 

Pursuit of virtual and false personas across borders and jurisdictions is problematic and it has been long assumed that informing the public is therefore the most important part of preventing fraud. The subsequent proliferation of campaigns, information, warnings and top tips responsibilise the public to accurately and consistently identify and protect themselves from this intangible menace. The assumption that we can educate and inform our way out of the ‘fraud epidemic’ (RUSI 2023) also implies that victims are just not doing what they’re told, and are not protecting themselves sufficiently from this threat to avoid victimhood. We are left wondering though, if there is so much protection messaging, then why is fraud the most commonly experienced crime in the UK (NCA 2023), and growing? (While also being significantly underreported (National Trading Standards 2023), indicating the true level of fraud victimhood is substantially higher). 

The link between lack of reporting, the shame experienced by victims, and bad experiences previously when reporting (Parti and Tahir 2023), suggests that attempts to protect the public not only lack in terms of effectiveness but can themselves contribute to victims experiencing self-blame for not being able to protect oneself as directed.  

Therefore, it follows that, key to protecting the public from fraud are the dual strategies of preventing and disrupting the ability of fraudsters to ply their ‘trade’ by providing information that is accessible, achievable and represents the reality of fraud in the places people experience it and in the way it appears in the moment. Fraud is not a singular act (and it often does not present as a single type), it is a multiplicity of interactions that are dependent on the context and reliant on the individual situation of the target. 

The OFCOM Illegal Harms Charter has thresholds that exclude platforms that are smaller and have significant evidence for, or potential of, single risk as opposed to multiple risk or large services. This exclusion means smaller platforms that are high risk for fraud are not caught by the Charter and are not required to pay the levy or engage in preventative measures. This proposal risks fraudsters simply migrating to platforms outside of this scope that by definition have less resource to deal with these harms. It should be strengthened in terms of bringing social media platforms, regardless of size, in line with other services in terms of more equitably sharing the conceptual, societal and financial contributions towards tackling fraud across sectors, including data sharing. 

Conceptual change is needed, where frictionless social media experiences are not seen as desirable but dangerous, akin to cars without seatbelts. Harm-specific measures need to be introduced to address the specific MOs and harms of individual fraud types that are relevant to that platform, i.e. “investment scams advertised on search engines and social media, romance scams committed via online dating platforms and purchase scams promoted through social media and auction websites” (UK Finance 2022). When all platforms engage with cross-industry counter-fraud protections and measures, support and contribute to work in this area, this will align with their clear fiscal and societal responsibility to contribute towards combatting fraud and protecting the public from its harms. 

Thank you to Dr Carter for her crucial insights. You can find out more in her recently published book ‘The Language of Romance Crimes: Interactions of Love, Money, and Threat’ for free and recent research paper published in The British Journal of Criminology ‘Confirm Not Command: Examining Fraudsters’ Use of Language to Compel Victim Compliance in Their Own Exploitation’, here. 

Cifas provides products and services to help organisations tackle emerging fraud threats and trends. Our ‘APP Victim Check’ and ’Beneficiary Checks’ solutions, together with our real-time customer monitoring tool ’Vision’, not only provides peace of mind but complies with the upcoming PSR rule changes and enables access to fraud-risk data from more than 750 organisations. For more information, visit here. 

Blog references 

Carter, E. (2021) ‘Distort, Extort, Deceive and Exploit: Exploring the Inner Workings of a Romance Fraud’, British Journal of Criminology 61: 283 – 302. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa072 

Hawkswood, J., Carter, E. and Brown, K. (2022) ‘Coercion and control in financial abuse; learning from domestic abuse’. All Party Parliamentary Group on consumer protection, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on debt and personal finance. National Trading Standards (NTS) Scams Team. Launched in the House of Commons 9 May 2023. CoercionandControlinFinancialAbuse.pdf (cwmtafmorgannwgsafeguardingboard.co.uk) 

National Trading Standards (2023) 19 million lose money to scams but fewer than a third report - National Trading Standards 

NCA (2023) National Strategic Assessment for Serious and Organised Crime www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/nsa-fraud  

Parti, K. and Tahir, F. 2023. "“If We Don’t Listen to Them, We Make Them Lose More than Money:” Exploring Reasons for Underreporting and the Needs of Older Scam Victims" Social Sciences 12(5): 264. doi.org/10.3390/socsci12050264 

RUSI (2023) www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/fraud-emergence-uk-epidemic  

UK Finance (2022) www.ukfinance.org.uk/news-and-insight/press-release/over-ps12-billion-stolen-through-fraud-in-2022-nearly-80-cent-app