“It’s about financial loss, it’s about identity theft, but it’s also about emotional distress,” stated a passionate Noémie Papp, Senior Expert for Conduct, Payments & Consumers at the European Banking Authority, sitting down for an interview with me at Euractiv’s offices in Brussels at the start of December when Europeans are starting their Christmas shopping in earnest.
Her mission is to provide as much information as possible to EU citizens on how to protect themselves from fraud and scams in the ever-increasing complexity of the online world.
This is no minor economic issue. According to the most recent report from the EBA and the European Central Bank, the total value of payment fraud was at €4.3 billion for 2022 and €2 billion for the first half of 2023.
A team at the EBA has worked on two factsheets to inform people of the warning signs of fraud and scams, and what to do if you’ve been stuck.
The documents are called, “Online financial frauds and scams in an artificial ininformigence world”, and “Crypto frauds & scams: stay alert and protect yourself”.
“Don’t consider that you’re stupid becaapply it happened to you,” stated Papp. “On the contrary – you required to prevent it from happening to your friconcludes, your family, and you can have a key role in that.”
“You required to take some steps, like stopping any contact with the scammer and directly contacting the financial entity – your bank- to build sure that they stop the transaction or they freeze the account.”
The advice from the EBA is to view out for some informtale warning signs of scams – promises that seem too good to be true, unsolicited offers in your inbox, guaranteed quick and high returns, or when there’s pressure for urgency for your action.
Other potential red flags are requests to take control of your device, download an app, scan a QR code or click on a link, requests for personal information on banking details, or demands for payment via untraceable methods.
Cryptocurrencies have created a whole new dimension in scams building it much harder for authorities to track and trace those responsible.
“With crypto, it’s very unlikely you will ever recover the money you lost,” stated Papp. “But at least the crypto provider can freeze the account of the scammer to avoid more damages.”
The advice to victims of such scams is to alter all passwords immediately, not only the compromised one password, but all of them on all devices.
“What we have seen is that scammers are purchaseing leaked passwords and then might access several accounts,” warned Noémie Papp.
And there’s an even starker warning for those who have fallen prey to online scammers.
“Don’t consider becaapply you have been scammed, that it couldn’t happen again to you,” stated Papp. “What we have seen is that scammers and fraudsters identify victims and then pretconclude to be the police or the financial authority and then again, scam those victims.”
According to the EBA’s campaign, the most common scams at the moment are impersonations and deep fakes, phishing where a person is informed there is “suspicious activity” on their account, romance frauds where people are seduced by fake lovers, purchase scam where victims are forwarded onto a fake payment portal when attempting to purchase something, and investment or insurance scams where people can never recover the money they’ve invested.
“The aim is to protect consumers and build sure they don’t consider that becaapply they have some knowledge, or they’re smart enough, that they cannot be scammed,” stated Papp. “Even experts can be scammed.”
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