Siobhan Baillie is MP for Stroud.
Online fraudsters will continue to cause damage in real life unless we tighten up the Online Safety Bill’s measures to make it easier to spot deceptive social media accounts.
Fraud is a huge and growing problem. In 2022 it was the UK’s most common crime, a staggering 41 per crnt of all crimes against individuals – rising from 30 per cent in 2017. It is a scary and complex picture with victims, police and policy makers constantly playing catch-up due to ever changing criminal tactics.
Action Fraud now estimates that 80 per cent of fraud is cyber-enabled and Ofcom estimates that 23 per cent of all reported frauds are initiated on social media. Yet the platforms take little responsibility for the ways fraudsters make use of them and organised criminals are basking under a lucrative cloak of anonymity. Fraudsters are operating 24/7 in our phones. In our pockets. In our homes.
The Online Safety Bill is due to complete its final stages in the House of Lords this month. It includes some very welcome measures to address fraud, making it a “priority offence” which social media platforms will have a duty to take “proportionate measures” to prevent. It will also contain specific requirements for platforms to remove fraudulent advertising.
Yet, as I exposed in my campaign about anonymous abuse, the elephant in the room is fake and anonymous accounts. Research from Clean Up The Internet found the ability to easily create anonymous, fake and deceptive social media accounts is a common enabler of pretty much every form of fraud perpetrated online.
We must do all we can to make it harder for fraudsters to target victims online. In addition to the horror of losing hard earned savings to faceless criminals, the clever tactics deployed leave victims experiencing deep shame. Many people simply do not report being hoodwinked by an online scam as they are embarrassed. Crimes like romance fraud deliberately exploit vulnerability, hope and loneliness.
When I talk to victims, they have almost always been conned by some kind of identity trickery. Police and Crime Commissioners tell me fake accounts make finding and prosecuting the perpetrators almost impossible.
Scammers can operate multiple fake accounts at once so shutting them down is a game of whack-a-mole. The 400 strong new National Fraud Squad officers that the government’s anti-fraud champion, Anthony Browne, announced in this publication will ‘chase fraudsters’. We have to assist those officers by doing everything we can to help people avoid scams and make it easier to find criminals.
Myself, cross party MPs and Peers worked closely with Clean Up The Internet to win Government backing to include a “User Verification Duty” and user empowerment duties in the Online Safety Bill.
These will require social media platforms to give users an option of verifying themselves, and options to filter out non-verified accounts. But sadly the current wording contains some gaping holes. Unless it is tightened up, Ministers will not be able to claim they have created real, impactful, swift change for social media users to rein in anonymous trolls, or help people protect themselves from fraud.
Most crucially, at present the Bill contains no requirement that UK users should be able to see which other users have – and haven’t – chosen to verify themselves. This is baffling, and risks hugely blunting the impact of the user verification duty on fraud.
If verification status were visible, “check if the account is verified” could become an incredibly powerful and incredibly simple, piece of fraud prevention advice. Peers are thankfully on top of this and, if there is no movement from government, we are expecting amendments to be tabled on visible verification.
User empowerment is a key pillar of helping people to stay safe online. Verification options have been rightly identified as an important part of safe user empowerment. So why is verification visibility even in debate?
The UK public want to be able to see this information. Opinion polling conducted this month has found that an overwhelming 78 per cent of UK social media users say it would help them avoid scams if they were able to see which social media accounts have been verified.
This chimes with Ofcom’s own research, published in March this year, which found that a ‘warning from the platform that content or messages come from an unverified source’ is the single most popular measure platforms could introduce to help users avoid getting drawn into scams.
I think we should be putting more control into social media users’ hands and expecting people to take personal responsibility for their own safety too. Provide freedom – freedom to verify and freedom to see who else has verified.
The Government has already done the hard yards by committing to giving verification options. I am now imploring Ministers not to let the legislation fall short at this final hurdle.
Let’s make sure it is obvious which users are verified. If we get this right, it could one of the most obvious, popular and widely appreciated benefits of the Online Safety Bill.
Siobhan Baillie is MP for Stroud.
Online fraudsters will continue to cause damage in real life unless we tighten up the Online Safety Bill’s measures to make it easier to spot deceptive social media accounts.
Fraud is a huge and growing problem. In 2022 it was the UK’s most common crime, a staggering 41 per crnt of all crimes against individuals – rising from 30 per cent in 2017. It is a scary and complex picture with victims, police and policy makers constantly playing catch-up due to ever changing criminal tactics.
Action Fraud now estimates that 80 per cent of fraud is cyber-enabled and Ofcom estimates that 23 per cent of all reported frauds are initiated on social media. Yet the platforms take little responsibility for the ways fraudsters make use of them and organised criminals are basking under a lucrative cloak of anonymity. Fraudsters are operating 24/7 in our phones. In our pockets. In our homes.
The Online Safety Bill is due to complete its final stages in the House of Lords this month. It includes some very welcome measures to address fraud, making it a “priority offence” which social media platforms will have a duty to take “proportionate measures” to prevent. It will also contain specific requirements for platforms to remove fraudulent advertising.
Yet, as I exposed in my campaign about anonymous abuse, the elephant in the room is fake and anonymous accounts. Research from Clean Up The Internet found the ability to easily create anonymous, fake and deceptive social media accounts is a common enabler of pretty much every form of fraud perpetrated online.
We must do all we can to make it harder for fraudsters to target victims online. In addition to the horror of losing hard earned savings to faceless criminals, the clever tactics deployed leave victims experiencing deep shame. Many people simply do not report being hoodwinked by an online scam as they are embarrassed. Crimes like romance fraud deliberately exploit vulnerability, hope and loneliness.
When I talk to victims, they have almost always been conned by some kind of identity trickery. Police and Crime Commissioners tell me fake accounts make finding and prosecuting the perpetrators almost impossible.
Scammers can operate multiple fake accounts at once so shutting them down is a game of whack-a-mole. The 400 strong new National Fraud Squad officers that the government’s anti-fraud champion, Anthony Browne, announced in this publication will ‘chase fraudsters’. We have to assist those officers by doing everything we can to help people avoid scams and make it easier to find criminals.
Myself, cross party MPs and Peers worked closely with Clean Up The Internet to win Government backing to include a “User Verification Duty” and user empowerment duties in the Online Safety Bill.
These will require social media platforms to give users an option of verifying themselves, and options to filter out non-verified accounts. But sadly the current wording contains some gaping holes. Unless it is tightened up, Ministers will not be able to claim they have created real, impactful, swift change for social media users to rein in anonymous trolls, or help people protect themselves from fraud.
Most crucially, at present the Bill contains no requirement that UK users should be able to see which other users have – and haven’t – chosen to verify themselves. This is baffling, and risks hugely blunting the impact of the user verification duty on fraud.
If verification status were visible, “check if the account is verified” could become an incredibly powerful and incredibly simple, piece of fraud prevention advice. Peers are thankfully on top of this and, if there is no movement from government, we are expecting amendments to be tabled on visible verification.
User empowerment is a key pillar of helping people to stay safe online. Verification options have been rightly identified as an important part of safe user empowerment. So why is verification visibility even in debate?
The UK public want to be able to see this information. Opinion polling conducted this month has found that an overwhelming 78 per cent of UK social media users say it would help them avoid scams if they were able to see which social media accounts have been verified.
This chimes with Ofcom’s own research, published in March this year, which found that a ‘warning from the platform that content or messages come from an unverified source’ is the single most popular measure platforms could introduce to help users avoid getting drawn into scams.
I think we should be putting more control into social media users’ hands and expecting people to take personal responsibility for their own safety too. Provide freedom – freedom to verify and freedom to see who else has verified.
The Government has already done the hard yards by committing to giving verification options. I am now imploring Ministers not to let the legislation fall short at this final hurdle.
Let’s make sure it is obvious which users are verified. If we get this right, it could one of the most obvious, popular and widely appreciated benefits of the Online Safety Bill.