The UK is to set to ban cold calls that sell financial products including insurance and cryptocurrencies in an effort to crack down on fraud, which costs the country around £7 billion ($8.7 billion) a year.
Announcing its new fraud strategy, the UK pledged 400 new jobs to update its approach to intelligence-led policing. The government will work with telecoms regulator Ofcom to use new technology to undermine phone number “spoofing,” so fraudsters cannot impersonate legitimate UK phone numbers.
Fraud is now the most common crime in the UK, with 1 in 15 people falling victim to it. The government aims to bring in laws that ensure more victims of fraud get their money back, by requiring financial institutions to reimburse victims of authorized fraud.
“Scammers ruin lives in seconds, deceiving people in the most despicable ways in order to line their pockets,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement. “We will take the fight to these fraudsters, wherever they try to hide.”
The government also pledged to stop methods commonly used by scammers to reach thousands of people at once such as so-called “SIM farms” and review the use of mass-texting services to keep these technologies out of the hands of criminals.
Photo credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
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