In today’s digital age, scams have become an increasingly prevalent threat, invading various aspects of society, and impacting individuals, businesses, and communities worldwide. With the proliferation of online interactions, including social media, e-commerce, and digital banking, scammers have seized numerous opportunities to exploit unsuspecting victims. From sophisticated phishing emails and fraudulent websites to elaborate investment schemes and identity theft, scams manifest in diverse forms, posing significant risks to individuals’ financial security and personal well-being. As technology continues to advance and scammers adapt their tactics, the prevalence of scams underscores the urgent need for comprehensive prevention measures and heightened awareness to mitigate their detrimental effects.
On our most recent episode of Inside the Sweeps, we are joined by Emma Harvey, Chief Digital Officer for Stop Scams UK, where we will delve into the intricacies of fraud prevention and protection against deceptive practices. As we navigate through this landscape, we’ll explore the valuable insights provided by Stop Scams UK, which are dedicated to empowering communities with the knowledge and tools needed to recognize and mitigate the risks of fraudulent activities. Join us as we uncover the strategies and resources available to individuals and businesses to navigate the ever-evolving threat of scams.
Alison Bussey
Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us on inside the sweeps. Today we are joined by a very special guest, Emma Harvey. Emma, could you please introduce yourself? And can you tell us about the important work stop scams UK does and your role within the organization?
Emma Harvey
Sure, happy to. My name’s Emma Harvey. I am the Chief Digital Officer at Stop Scams UK, which is a trisector collaboration here in the UK, bringing together the big banks, digital banks as well the telcos and a lot of large platforms. So Meta, Google match, Amazon, they’re all members of ours.
And really, to look at scams and fraud and how we can stop scams at the source and my core focus is around data sharing, but our group together, we also look at policy and look at the environment, around fraud and scams and how we can work with government to make to make collaboration better.
Alison Bussey
I know it can feel like right now online scams are just taking over. They really seem like they’re everywhere. With more and more of our lives happening online, scammers have all the opportunities they need to mess with our online activities. How prevalent are online scams today and what are some of the most common types your organization has encountered?
Emma Harvey
I think scams are everywhere. I mean, they’re online, they’re in messaging, you know, they infiltrate every part of our lives. There are people wanting to take advantage of all our vulnerabilities, the types of scams that we’re looking into at the moment here in the UK in particular is one called “Hey, mom. Hey Dad” which is a really simple text and it’s a text or a message that’s sent out to parents and it’s seeking out parents who are who are empty nesters. I don’t know if that’s the phrase that you use in the US, so your kids have gone away to university for the first time. Or maybe they’ve got their first job, that’s somewhere remote from you and a text comes in and it says “hi, mom, I’m texting you from my new number. My phones broken and I need some help”. And of course, there’s like as a mom, you know, or parent you want make sure that your kid is, OK. Especially when they’re out there in the world by themselves and the conversation continues, and the phone is broken so they can’t get access to their banking apps, and they need some help with some money. And they need you to send some money to their friends’ bank account.
It’s pretty simple and it’s a great fraud because it happens within 24 hours. They ask for about £1000 a pop and it’s just a really, really simple, quick fraud.
Alison Bussey
Wow!
Emma Harvey
And of course, the fraudster disappears. The money goes into someone’s account that you don’t really know, and you think you’ve helped your child out. You also have lost your ability to communicate with your child because you think they’ve broken their phone, and you think they’re on this other number. So that’s one of the scams we’re looking at today.
We’re also looking at a whole stack of data because we’re working really collaboratively with our partners to just identify all of the different scam types. There’s lots of things like delivery fraud. Delivery fraud, sounds a bit weird. It’s a text saying that you’re you have a missed delivery those types of things are quite prevalent here in the UK as well, but all sorts of things like even if you were to have a look on various marketplaces and we have a whole stack of classified sites here.
But just really deals that are too good to be true that ultimately are those types of things are what we’re discussing at the moment.
Alison Bussey
We’ve talked about some of the scams you’re seeing, but knowing how those scammers operate is extremely important not only for individuals, but organizations to help keep them safe. Stop Scams UK is leading the charge against some of these sneaky tactics. You’re armed with some serious know how. Could you share some insights into the methods scammers use to target individuals or organizations and how they’ve maybe adapted to exploit new vulnerabilities we’re seeing?
Emma Harvey
Yea of course. Where would I start? I would say that there’s a lot of phishing, smishing type things going around, and it feels like, scammers are thinking about things like we would think about things. So, I’m an ex-marketer and I would think of a process around how do I identify my customers, how do identify my hot leads? How do I then kind of convert or in this case take money away from someone and it really feels like scammers are taking that approach. When you think about starting with phishing or smishing via text or via an email, taking those emails, taking those details, those details potentially being sold on to another third party to leverage, you know, all of this is happening today and it’s quite scary.
You know, obviously AI is going be playing a part here as well, and we’re looking at ways that we can use AI to automate some of our processes and detect certain information so that we can fight against scammers. So of course they’re doing exactly the same thing.
Alison Bussey
It’s kind of like fighting technology and technology against each other. You know, we sometimes, look at proactive measures that, businesses or financial institutions can implement. There are cyber security solutions, web filtering, stringent verification processes, even just education initiatives.
There’s some different strategies we look at, what responsibilities do businesses and financial institutions have in preventing scam, and are there ways they can effectively protect their stakeholders?
Emma Harvey
Obviously here in the UK there’s a regulatory environment that sets out what people have to do in regard to, knowing your customer, anti-money laundering regulations and protection for customers who have been defrauded. The obligations here are quite stringent, and I know in the UK a lot of the banking partners have quite high-tech AI led pieces of software that are processing the threats within the payment system networks. Here also in the telco environment you have regulated use of spam shield type technology to filter out malicious text messages flying around, and there’s a lot of URL sharing going on, so those malicious URLs that have been detected in those smishes, helping to filter those away from the UK community. So, lots of different technology being used and at stop scams. What we’re trying to do is we’re just trying to connect the dots between all of these different organizations and all of the great things they’re thinking about. That might be taking a bit of information from the telco community, making sure it gets into the banking community and those types of programs are the programs that we’re running.
Alison Bussey
It really seems like it’s very much a collaborative effort. You can’t stand alone and fight something as big as scams. You need to know all the bits and pieces and all the different people to come together in order to do that. Now you’re in the UK and I know your tax season has wound down ours in Canada and the US is kind of finishing its full swing. It seems like with tax can also come scams. What are some common tactics employed in tax fraud schemes and are there any proactive measures that individuals can look to help against fight against those fraudulent activities?
Emma Harvey
I think the things that I’ve seen recently and they’re not at all new in the UK are we have something called HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs) which I think is the same as the IRS in the states, We’ve seen messages going out like “you’re due a tax refund, come and claim your tax refund here.” And I think if it’s unexpected and if it’s too good to be true, you’ve just got to know that nothing in life comes for free. So be a little bit vigilant and suspicious of those types of things. We’ve seen things like people, or I guess interception type frauds where people will intercept information, change out payment details and those types of things which can happen in different professions that might be paying tax bills for you. I think just being extra vigilant and watching out for those types of scams where someone is trying to either take your information or take your money in that transaction.
Alison Bussey
I feel like with tax season it’s like if you’re not getting any money, I don’t think it’s going to change later. Usually, it’s pretty good if you’re done. I’ve received the odd thing from here in Canada from the CRA, and I’m like that’s definitely not for me! I think it’s crucial to recognize the pivotal role education and awareness campaigns can play when we’re talking about scams, often they can give a bit of a crash course on scam spotting and, help us try and stay ahead. Can you share an experience or story that shows how important education around this or an awareness campaign that was helping prevent scams or anything that stop scams UK has done?
Emma Harvey
Rhere’s a couple of things that we that we have done and that we do. The first thing that we do in the UK is we have a telephone number a short form telephone number which is called 159. And 159 is a number that consumers can dial if they’re worried someone’s calling them from their bank and they’re not who they say they are. If you dial 159, it will then connect you. It’s voice recognition led, so it’ll say, “Please tell me the name of the bank you want to be connected to and it will connect you straight away to whoever you want to bank with.” So, just say you want to speak to the HSBC Fraud Team or the Santander Fraud Team or the Barclays Fraud Team, JPMorgan will probably join that as well. You’re able to connect with those fraud teams, so we have that type of service.
And we run a campaign with the big, big kind of sort of central broadcast here, which is the BBC, and run a BBC scam Safe Week where they talk about all the different scams happening within the UK. And last year it was an amazing process because they had a lot of different personalities within the BBC that people would be aware of, so television personalities, radio personalities, talking about how they or their families had been victims of scams.
Alison Bussey
Wow.
Emma Harvey
It made it quite personal, and it was a huge event for us because it was such collaboration between all of our members as well. If you imagine our members are big banks and telcos and all of those wonderful consumer platforms, they could share stories and they could bring to life what’s happening in fraud and scam through that week. So that was really cool, and I think the other thing that we do with our membership organization is we get different people to speak and tell us what’s happening in the environment, and it keeps us quite close to all of the different topics because there’s so many different flavours of scams. This week, we had a talk from a victim of fraud and exploitation and following that up we had a talk from a member firm who was telling us how they were thinking about that type of fraud and scam and how it was structured and how they’re trying to support victims.
I think just helping to share all of the amazing work that’s happening in all of the different the different member firms that were involved in, but also staying close to this as a human, you know, something that’s really human impacting. So those are the couple of things that we do.
Alison Bussey
You don’t always think about it. I think when you’re thinking scams, you’re thinking the technology and all the things happening, but that there is a human side and the impact that it has on individuals and being able to hear those stories I think makes it a little bit more powerful that this can happen to anyone. And we all want to be very careful. There are also the legal intricacies of scams and especially with the anonymity that the Internet provides to scammers. So, coordinating efforts across multiple agencies which you’ve spoken about as well as international borders, must sometimes also be a hurdle in this situation. So, in light of these challenges, how effective are current legal and law enforcement strategies in deterring and prosecuting scams?
Emma Harvey
That’s a really hard question. It’s a really hard question and it’s difficult from a few different angles because you have got threat actors sitting in different territories. So, there was something that we looked at quite recently and the people who were perpetrating this scam were sitting in the Netherlands. Now, that’s not that far away from the UK, but still it’s got that international aspect.
And how do you get law enforcement working side by side in different territories? I’m not sure that’s being crossed off yet, and especially when we’re talking about the low-level types of crimes that we’re currently looking at because we’re looking at low value, high volume types of prods. It’s very hard to look at the kind of law enforcement side of things.
I know there is a desire to share across territories and we were part of GASS (Global Anti-Scam Summit) a forum last month. At the Global Anti Scam Alliance forum last month, which was talking about how do you solve those issues? How do you start to think about what the barriers are and having spoken to some of the more international players, we believe there are carve outs within law to be able to support data sharing from the UK to other territories. Specifically thinking about the US. But it’s far from there yet.
I think the place that we are with data sharing in the UK at the moment is data sharing, focusing on bad actor data and where ultimately, we would like to get to as a community is feeling good about sharing victim data to be able to support those victims and identify those victims.
That’s kind of where we are and data sharing and different territories.
Alison Bussey
I think it’s good that there’s a conversation happening, which is always a good start to shaping and figuring out what’s going to happen in the future. We did touch a little bit on artificial intelligence, or AI and machine learning a little bit earlier in the podcast. You know that’s an emerging and very powerful tool. Scammers use it, but it can also be used in detecting and mitigating scams. How do you see these technologies shaping the future of scam prevention and what role do you see can Stop Scams UK play in leveraging AI for better fraud detection?
Emma Harvey
There’s tons happening in AI, and I think the banks and the telcos and of course the big platforms have been using it for various reasons for years. But being able to detect abnormal activity is really what it’s being used for. Being able to sort of add different pieces of data together to get to that either orange flag, the amber flag, or the red flag there. And so that’s sort of the way that it’s being used and definitely adding more data sources becoming more sophisticated around being able to process data and make decisions or at least flag decisions is absolutely the way to go.
In stop scams what we’re also using AI for is communication, so looking at generative AI to have conversations with scammers, but we’re also using it to extract information. Sort of doing those boring tasks. They talk about AI taking over repetitive tasks, so we’re also looking at that. We have a piece of technology that we’re building at the moment, which can scrape certain key parameters of information and then take that and have a contextual conversation with a scammer and have that conversation to the end of harvesting some particular information that we can then send into the banking community and the payment networks.
So that’s sort of a way where using AI at the moment it’s fairly simple, but it’s advanced as well because it’s an AI chat bot, I guess pretending to be a human and taking on a lot of those human traits, so it won’t feel like a customer service agent trying to answer questions, it’ll feel like you and I having a conversation. There’ll be a pause. There’ll be some context. There’ll be a thinking and there’ll be a response and that’s what we’re building out at the moment.
Alison Bussey
That is some really cool technology, AI fighting AI. What AI can do and how you can teach it. You’re going to have a conversation with a person that’s not going to feel like you’re talking to AI.
So that’s a really cool new tool that you are working on! Are there any other trends or patterns in online scams that you’ve seen emerge recently and what should someone do if they believe they fallen victim?
Emma Harvey
New trends and scams, I think the patterns of the scams are always emerging and the scammers seem to move to different technologies and leverage those you know the great qualities of different technologies. So, if you imagine moving to encrypted messaging rather than sitting on text or at those types of things definitely are being leveraged. I don’t think the scams change themselves that much from what I can see, a scam that might have happened on eBay 10 years ago is probably happening you know more on Facebook Marketplace these days. I don’t think the scams are different. And I think the scammers are jumping from platform to platform really quickly. If you think of a scam that originates one place, will move to a text message or move to encrypted messaging or move to email. I think the scammers are using so many different techniques to be able to build that credibility with the end user before they’re paying out.
What would I say is advice to consumers looking out for scams? I would just say be vigilant, you know, check your information as much as you can. Be wary if you’re going to hand someone over a chunk of cash. And I think also go educate yourself a little bit around what scams exist. The BBC Scams Safe Week website is a great resource here in the UK and obviously open for anyone to look at and I think just, being wary.
And if you’re kind of suspicious, stop, think and have a chat to someone else about what’s happening with the situation. There’s something about just taking a pause if you’re feeling uncomfortable about something, take a pause. Speak to your best friend. Speak to your mom.
Speak to your buddy. Whatever it may be about, I’m feeling uncomfortable about this, what do you think? And there’s something about breaking the spell with a scammer, because in different situations it’ll be quite an intense period of time where they’re trying to get you to a point where you’re going to provide them cash or provide them information that they can then sell on to someone else who will then ask you for cash. Just be wary. Be really wary around what people’s motives are. And yeah, stop, have a chat with someone else. Be aware of the scams that are around and yeah, just try and stop before you do anything that feels like a major step.
Alison Bussey
I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today and join in on this important conversation that really impacts everyone globally. Are there any closing comments or thoughts you’d like to leave our audience with?
Emma Harvey
I don’t think so. Just huge thanks for having the chat and really happy to be able to share what we’re doing at Stop Scams UK. If there’s anyone else who would like to get in touch with us, you’re welcome to. We have a website so you can contact us through that. Really happy to chat with you today.
Alison Bussey
Awesome! Thank you so much for joining us, Emma!