Banks have renewed warnings to their customers to be wary of shameless scammers. With banks often having to manage the fallout from clever scams defrauding their customers, TSB has shown its duty of care when it comes to prevention and detection.
TSB has advised customers that they are likely to encounter more scam posts on Facebook Marketplace, an e-commerce service which is used by over 1 billion Facebook users. 34%, equating to a third of adverts hosted on the platform are thought to be fraudulent, but remain on the site due to difficulty to regulate these spaces.
TSB’s Fraud Team investigated a campaign of fraud on Facebook and directly engaged with 100 sellers to determine whether the transaction was legitimate or a scam. was rather than any monitoring technology.
On the marketplace sellers advertise e-commerce, second-hand products such as, cars, clothes, watches.
According to a BBC report, 77% of social media platforms, dating apps and online marketplaces are now experiencing a frequency of scams tarnishing users’ trust. These platforms will need to strategize how online spaces can be regulated and prevent users coming across illegal activity or fraud.
TSB, which is a major UK bank, also warns that scams originating from Meta Platforms account for up to £250m losses to UK households. Fraud experts for TSB were deliberately misguided by fraudsters when posts they were searching took them to a fake website. The scammers also refused to show items in-person and demanded advanced fees.
Social media companies are being urged to sanitise their own sites by taking down adverts if they suspect fraud, while banks, who cannot tackle the problem alone, also face fraud aimed at their onboarding and digital payment processes. The Online Fraud Charter, which is signed by 11 big tech companies, is the overarching law to combat online fraud.
The high fraud rate on Facebook Marketplace accounts for 73% of all purchase fraud cases at TSB.
