UK Finance has shared a Half Year Fraud Report 2024.
According to the latest update from UK Finance, fraud continues to pose a major “threat” to the United Kingdom as well as potentially cause “serious harm’ to individuals and society in general.
During the first half of 2024, UK Finance pointed out in its extensive research report that just over £570 million was “stolen in payment fraud as criminals continue to ruthlessly target people and try to deceive them into making payments or providing enough information to enable their accounts to be accessed or controlled.”
As well as the financial losses, the extensive research report from UK Finance pointed out that this crime can cause “severe psychological harm” to unsuspecting and vulnerable victims.
According to the update from UK Finance, the “best” or most effective way to protect against fraud is a more proactive approach (easier said than actually done in practice) so that you “prevent it from happening in the first place.”
As stated in the update shared by UK Finance, this is the focus of the financial services industry which invests huge sums of money, “including deploying a wide variety of sophisticated tools, to try and detect potential fraud and intervene before it happens.’
In the first half of this year, it is being reported by UK Finance that over £710 million of ‘unauthorized” fraud was prevented, which represents a substantial increase of 13 per cent.
Due to the rise of digital platforms and services, bad actors have developed increasingly sophisticated ways to target their victims. Moreover, with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfakes, it has become even easier to go after consumers.
It’s always best, therefore, to remain extremely vigilant and only correspond with trusted, reputable, and well-known brands and services. For instance, there might be Ads or promotions from service providers via social media platforms that are not too well-established and by signing up via these sites, the less tech-savvy consumers can open themselves to become victims of phishing scams, intrusive data collection, and/or other abusive activities.