According to a survey by Opinium for the fraud prevention software company Callsign, 35% of UK consumers are losing trust in organisations because of increasing scams.
Figures from UK Finance reveal that the amount of money lost to fraudsters in the UK in the first six months of this year totalled a staggering £754m. Numbers like these, have been described as posing a national security threat.
In the last 12 months, three-quarters of consumers have received scam emails. 68% were sent scams via text, 58% via phone and 15% through messaging apps. These scammers attempt to defraud users by tricking them to make payments to them.
The survey included 10,000 people, 60% of which assigned the biggest blame to banks, retailers and social media for this increase in scams.
These consumers are calling for more action to be taken by organisations to reduce scams. 44% want mobile operations to do more, and 37% are calling on banks to do more. Users themselves are finding it difficult to report scams, due to both the lack of a clear organisation to report them to and because of their sheer volume.
It’s no surprise considering this that users are calling on organisations for their help. Especially since they know what action they want to be taken. More than 38% of UK consumers in the survey think users should have to do more to prove who they are when logging into a platform.
Stuart Dobbie, senior vice-president at Callsign commented that “Our data demonstrates that consumer trust in our digital world has vanished and – rightly or wrongly – brands are being blamed”
He went on to say that “ the sense is that little is being done to purposely re-establish digital trust through complete and accurate digital identities.”
Dobbie said that without trust in knowing the identity of a platform user, trust will reduce further and large parts of society that are reliant on online systems will stop working.
“Digital trust is about the confidence we have in the technology, processes and people to secure our digital world,” he said. “It is underpinned by digital identities, and the fact that scams are running wild proves that our digital identities are well and truly broken.”
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash