In October this year, Meta announced that it would be expanding its information-sharing partnership with banks in a bid to protect people against fraud.
Dodging scams has become an everyday experience on social media platforms. From purchasing items on Facebook Marketplace that seem too good to be true, to fake job opportunities sent through WhatsApp, they appear to be an inevitable part of the experience.
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But this should not be the case. And for a long time, banks have called on Meta to do more to prevent these scams from happening. But now, action and results are finally being seen. But is it enough to actually make a difference? And why has it taken so long?
Back in June 2023 TSB called for Meta to do more to protect its customers from Fraud. With this new partnership, it could be viewed that these calls have now been answered, however, over a year after TSB requested it.
Meta has since expanded the Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE), a threat intelligence sharing programme for financial institutions, allowing banks to share intelligence with Meta directly so Meta can use it to stop scammers and protect users.
RBI reached out to Meta for some comments on this new step to help fraud victims. When asked how will these new partnerships prevent users from falling victim to scams and fraud, a spokesperson for Meta responded: “The process is really simple. The bank shares a URL to a profile, ad or piece of content on our platforms. We can then take action against that bad actor and investigate whether there are opportunities for other action, both in terms of wider enforcement or improving our detection. The channel is not focused on the volume of takedowns or speed, fraud is highly adversarial so fraudsters will often try to repost something after it is removed. This is an intelligence-sharing channel designed as a collaboration for Meta and Banks to work together to improve detection.”
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By GlobalDataNatWest and Metro Bank are the first banks in the UK to participate in this pilot, with more scheduled to join. RBI reached out to TSB for a comment but has yet to receive a response.
Purchase Fraud, Impersonation Fraud, Investment fraud spread across Meta platforms
A month before TSB renewed its calls, the bank revealed the largest cases of fraud that Meta users fall victim to: Purchase Fraud, Impersonation Fraud, Investment fraud.
Purchase fraud is a type of fraud that involves tricking people into paying for goods or services that don’t exist. TSB found that 80% of purchase fraud cases at TSB involved scams that took place through Meta’s platforms, 60% of these came from Facebook Marketplace, according to research conducted in 2023.
Fraud from scam activity on Facebook Marketplace doubled in a year with TSB refunding 2,100 cases from this platform alone.
Impersonation Fraud is when someone pretends to be someone else in order to authorise a payment and is more common on another meta platform, WhatsApp. TSB data showed WhatsApp accounts for 65% of TSB cases within this category, followed by Facebook at 13%. One of the biggest concerns TSB had on this was the increase of 300%.
Investment Fraud, when a customer is presented with a fake investment opportunity, also takes place through Meta Platforms and makes up for 87% of all investment fraud cases at TSB, with this one more commonly found on Instagram.
So, with purchase fraud for Facebook, Impersonation fraud for WhatsApp and Investment Fraud for Instagram, it shows that fraud can evolve to find the best way to target its prey, and will only grow if serious action is not taken.
Is this too little too late?
But, this is not news. As stated before, TSB had previously been very vocal about the concerns. So why has it taken this long? RBI asked Meta for a comment as to why this programme was not launched sooner? To this Meta responded: “We have been working on FIRE for some time now. The initial 6-month pilot involving NatWest and Metro Bank started last October (2023) for example.”
While this is true, the pilot still launched five months after RBI first reported on TSB’s concerns about the spike in fraud cases.
But, progress is progress. And while it could be argued things could have been done sooner, there is still a great number of successes that have come from the initial pilot scheme. Key successes include the takedown of a significant concert ticket scam network attempting to target people in the UK and US.
Thanks to data shared between NatWest, Metro Bank and Meta during the six-month pilot, facilitated under the cross-collaborative umbrella of Stop Scams UK, Meta was able to remove approximately 20,000 accounts run by scammers from the 185 URLs shared, which in turn has helped the company to strengthen its fraud detection capabilities.
Another example of banks taking precautions towards these types of fraud is through the use of words that are flagged on the reference for bank transfers. For example, many investment fraud cases involve cryptocurrency, a word which, along with variations, is immediately flagged and results in the payment being delayed by some banks when a transfer is made. This is something that is not done in conjunction with Meta, but shows how banks are exhibiting the need to adapt to the new threats that arise through social media.
Feedback following the initial pilot stage of the FIRE programme has been positive and Meta will now onboard more banks over the coming months as we continue to test and learn.
What are Meta’s plans for the rest of the world?
But what about the rest of the world? Of course, social media spreads across the entire globe. When asked if plans are in place to expand this recent partnership with banks to other countries, Meta said: “In the UK we are currently in the process of onboarding more banks (that’s in addition to NatWest and Metro Bank who were already in the pilot) and we welcome the participation of additional UK banks too if they would like to get involved. We’ve also announced the expansion of FIRE in Australia. We’re starting by working with a small number of financial institutions in a couple of countries to learn how best to fine-tune our detection systems and scale this programme as part of our broader anti-scam efforts over time.”
For the time being, it will be interesting to see if this new scheme results in fewer people falling victim to fraud on Meta platform and most importantly, losing less money. But for now, we will have to wait and see.
