Scam stickers

Muddleduddle

Getting so angry watching TV reports about scammers. I wonder how hard it would be for the banks and phone companies to get together and provide phones with a simple warning sticker to be attached to the handset or to be displayed at home for vulnerable people to remind them to not give out bank details/download software etc? Surely it wouldn't cost much?

DullGreyGuy

How many vulnerable people buy brand new phones regularly to get said sticker? Who's going to enforce that they actually apply/leave the sticker rather than removing it/ throwing it away because it looks ugly? 

Would be easier for "someone" to do a mailshot but as mentioned above, most will just end up in the bin and not really sure it would make any difference. 

The only person I know who's personally fallen for such a scam wouldn't be considered vulnerable, didnt give bank details or download software but instead the people called them at a time he was highly stressed with work and convinced him to transfer the £20k or so in his account to a "safe account". Said sticker wouldn't have helped him in any way. 

BlueonBlue

I often wonder if britain is europes capital for fraudsters it wouldnt surprise me at all .
I have heard GB termed the golden nugget before .

MattMattMattUK

BlueonBlue said:

I often wonder if britain is europes capital for fraudsters it wouldnt surprise me at all .

I think we might be the capital for victims of fraud, the fraudsters themselves are often located abroad, usually not in Europe.

BlueonBlue said:

I have heard GB termed the golden nugget before .

A combination of stupid, greedy people and having English as the language which is taught in many schools globally, so scammers from most countries are likely to know English and that makes targeting people in English speaking countries easier. 

Brie

I think the only thing to do is to constantly warn people and repeat this over and over.  And if they are that vulnerable then there should be a way to limit who can call them and whom they can call too perhaps? 

My MiL had seen so many ads for the Postcode lottery she wanted to sign up to it because the ads made her believe that if she did so she would automatically receive a large amount of money.  There was no scam involved just a lack of understanding.  fortunately for us she eventually forgot how to use a phone and if it rang wouldn't answer it as she "knew" it wouldn't be for her.  

DullGreyGuy

MattMattMattUK said:

BlueonBlue said:

I often wonder if britain is europes capital for fraudsters it wouldnt surprise me at all .

I think we might be the capital for victims of fraud, the fraudsters themselves are often located abroad, usually not in Europe.

BlueonBlue said:

I have heard GB termed the golden nugget before .

A combination of stupid, greedy people and having English as the language which is taught in many schools globally, so scammers from most countries are likely to know English and that makes targeting people in English speaking countries easier. 

Two random sites surprisingly put Germany as a higher proportion of scam victims than the UK but we were second and New Zealand third. However I would have a very low confidence in the accuracy of the data as it's going to be dependent on victims actually registering it and clearly those with active protections are much more likely going to. If you are a victim of push fraud in the UK you're probably going to report it to Action Fraud and your Bank both which will record it and how good statisticians are of deduplicating is a question. If you were in another less developed part of the world or US you may have no rights to the money back from the bank and the police may just call you an idiot and so not record it. 

You would have thought English would be a good target given the number of large economies that use it, target the US probably but once thats setup you may as well do UK, NZ, Australia etc whilst your at it. Perhaps however its easier to steal £50 from hundreds of thousands than trying to get £5,000 from thousands of people 

Momanns

Bank's could send out 6 foot luminated signs and people would still give out details. Most apps now contain multiple warnings around passcodes/OTP's etc and people still go through these steps to provide said codes

Fraud is out of control and it's victims come from all walks of life but vulnerable people should definitely have additional support. The roll out of confirmation of payee will help and I support the additional step some banking apps have around only allowing transfers from a dedicated "home" venue.