Big Tech Struggling Against Online Fraud, Says Bank Boss

The boss of one of the UK's top high-street banks has called on online giants such as Facebook to pull their weight in combatting Britain's growing fraud epidemic.

- ANDY GREGORY

Robin Bulloch, the CEO of TSB, said social media companies are a growing starting point for fraud as they allow criminals free access to vast numbers of potential victims.

Bank fraud costs Britons more than £1bn a year, according to industry statistics. TSB led the charge five years ago in agreeing to compensate victims of fraud when people had lost money through no fault of their own.

“The majority of fraud starts online, specifically on social media, and it is high time that tech firms step up to protect people using their sites,” wrote Mr Bulloch in an op-ed for The

Independent, in which he pushed for tech companies to contribute to the reimbursement of people who are defrauded on their platforms.

Casting fresh light on how criminals are attempting to snare new victims, figures released by TSB show that fraud on social media platforms accounted for 61 per cent of all cases in which their customers had accidentally sent scammers money in the first three months of this year.

Four in five of these cases involved purchase fraud, where criminals falsely list discounted items for sale that never arrive once paid for, according to the bank. Notably, 71 per cent of these cases stemmed from Facebook, TSB said, warning that it was “deeply concerned by the high levels of fraud from tech companies and Meta-owned social media sites”.

In one instance, a woman was scammed out of £4,000 by someone posing as a stonemason while she was searching for a suitable headstone after the death of her son. In another, a woman transferred funds to a bank account after what she thought was an urgent request from her daughter.