Good People Use Social Media: Social Media Firms and Banks Have a Responsibility to Protect Them

Of 2,000 UK adults examined by Tunic Pay, the anti-fraud fintech firm, and Opinium, the market research consultancy, only one in five (21 per cent) said social media platforms were doing enough to tackle payment scams. Firms like TikTok, Facebook, X and Instagram all came under fire in the Tunic Pay survey as it set out to uncover how social media was impacting the fraud space. One of the key points of the research was surrounding who is to blame when users fall victim. Sixty-nine per cent of the UK adult population believes social media firms have it in their power to do more to prevent scams, with more than half (51 per cent) holding banks and social media platforms equally responsible for failing to prevent scams. For 73 per cent of respondents, these two worlds must work together in order to help customer check people are who they say they are before agreeing to send them money. However, 66 per cent still hold banks to blame more as they believe banks should work harder to check payments recipients are who they say they are before transactions go through. These findings follow a recent development in banking regulation that now requires all UK banks to reimburse customers who are proven to be victims of payment scams up to £85,000 per case. Nicky Goulimis, CEO of Tunic Pay comments: “Social media companies are quickly running out of places to hide from calls by industry and consumers alike who want to see them act harder and faster to curb the proliferation of scams on their platforms. But, in reality, any chance these platforms will sit up and pay real attention remains slim while they don’t have to pay out, like banks do, when their users lose money to scams.”

Impact of APP fraud

The latest UK Finance data shows that 72 per cent of authorised push payments (APP) scams originate online. This equates to over £150million of losses to APP scams in the first half of this year alone. Industry bodies, including UK Finance, have speculated that the true cost of APP scams could be up to 10 times higher than official figures, however, due to the sheer volume of unreported cases. More than a quarter (26 per cent) of UK adults report that they are using social media less due to fears of being scammed. This rises to more than a third (34 per cent) amongst those who have been targeted by fraudsters before. Nico Barawid, co-founder of Tunic Pay adds: “The APP fraud problem is widely believed to be as much as ten times bigger than reported. That makes it a £4-5billion issue. If social media companies start paying reparations to the tune of billions, they might find more motivation to put better checks in place.”

Case study: TikTok scam

Persephone Tsebelis, a victim of a TikTok scam and engineer at Tunic Pay said: “I was scammed on TikTok trying to buy tickets to a major American singer’s intimate and subsequently sold-out London gig. Scamming is a part of life on social media and, while this is the first time I’d been scammed on a social platform, it wasn’t the first time it had nearly happened., I work in the anti-fraud industry, I knew the probability this was a scam was high, and even so I still wasn’t on high enough alert. “Social media companies and banks should both be required to do more in the way of checks and should better share the responsibility for fraud. People don’t want to have to do all the checks and balances to make sure it’s not payment fraud. There’s an expectation that big businesses have the power to do that for them and so should. “I don’t use social media any less since being scammed. I use social media and am a good person – surely there are other good people on social media out there too.”