After just 9% of people were able to identify scam texts and emails, an official campaign has been launched to help people spot foul play.
Fraud is one of the fastest growing crimes in Britain, and the Take Five to Stop Fraud Week taking place between the 22nd and 26th January aims to help raise awareness about the ways in which fraudsters target people for their cash. According to the government, 3.3m cases of fraud took place in the 12 months to June 2017.
Take The Quiz
UK Finance, a banking trade body, revealed that in the first half of 2017, £366m was lost to financial fraud, including email, phone and online scams. Take Five research found that 80% of people believed they could confidently identify fraud, however out of 63,000 people who took Take Five’s test to detect genuine and fraudulent emails and texts, just 9% (5,942) could answer all 8 questions correctly. You can take Take Five’s fraud detection quiz here.
Tips To avoid Financial Fraud
Take Five have three pieces of advice for those worried about fraud, or who think they may have been a victim of a scam…
Requests to move money: A genuine bank or organisation will never contact you out of the blue to ask for your PIN, full password or to move money to another account. Only give out your personal or financial details to use a service that you have given your consent to, that you trust and that you are expecting to be contacted by
Clicking on links/files: Don’t be tricked into giving a fraudster access to your personal or financial details. Never automatically click on a link in an unexpected email or text
Personal information: Always question uninvited approaches in case it’s a scam. Instead, contact the company directly using a known email or phone number
Take the Take Five fraud detection quiz here.
