6 ms·

Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals. Some reasons why Brits might be so so vulnerable: * Major: English speaking so common to be targeted f

Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals. Some reasons why Brits might be so so vulnerable: * Major: English speaking so common to be targeted from less affluent ex-commonwealth countries. * Major: Ageing population have most of the wealth. * Major: Lots of vulnerable victims online and relatively high social media engagement. * Major: Little fear of retaliation (other than Jim Browning). The UK is having less of an engagement in global policing (due to leaving Brexit) and has less reach as a consequence * Minor: Degrading international relations. Less empathy shown towards Brits due to somewhat inward looking foreign policies over the past decades. * Minor: Growing economic disparity causing a glut of "get rich quick" victims. Honestly I think Jim Browning is showing how this problem is solved and is probably having a 100x impact over the average bank worker. The Banks should be funding him and others like him. For those that don't know who Jim is, he does awesome work in identifying scammers and working with the local / relevant authorities into shutting their services down.

blfr 5y ago
Why would brexit impact police interactions with other commonwealth countries. Or even global policing.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  AFAIK Europol has been a significant factor in fighting online fraud because much of it is international and the same group targets many EU countries at once.
- simonh 5y ago
  Because we lost access to many EU police databases and data sharing agreements. We negotiated continued access to some stuff, but there are still some significant gaps. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56529359 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56529359
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    How are these databases used to police/punish the stereotypical Nigerian scammer?
    - simonh 5y ago
      I don't think that's a reasonable question, not all scammers are Nigerian. Some are based in the UK, others in Europe. Also the EU had data sharing agreements and collaboration outreach with police forces all over the world that we also lost access to. That's one of the complications with our data sharing with the EU; they have agreements to share data with non-EU countries on the basis that their data is only shared within the EU, which we are now not. Therefore the EU can't grant us access to databases containing that data until we/they have permission from these other countries. We will, and are sorting it out but it's going to take time. Brexit was always going to come with some costs, that should be obvious even if you think on balance it was the right choice, and this is one of them.
      - tremon 5y ago
        The intended interpretation is (Nigerian scam)mer, not (Nigerian) scammer; the scammers aren't Nigerian, the scam is. It refers to one of the earliest well-known forms of a type of e-mail scam: "Hello, I'm a Nigerian prince with a lots of funds but I can't access it, please send me $amount so I can get access and I will return it ten-fold".
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        The poster forgot the bunny quotes ("so-to-say") in «stereotypical "Nigerian scammer"», but added the term 'stereotypical' to lead you there, and the content was clear: certainly the poster did not express or suggest that «scammers are Nigerian». "Scotch tape" is from Minnesota, and the Scots are probably not that disturbed from the underlying idea of "Careful with that glue, Eugene! "Be a Scot", don't waste it". The Nigerian princes happened, terminology spawned, Nigeria has presumably not yet demanded that those scams should be called with Greek letters. Because we are not fools and we know losing one's head is not decapitation, and losing one's mind is not misplacing it on the wrong table. You know what's Eugene even if no-one's called Eugene, and if you don't you can get it's a cultural reference.
- phreeza 5y ago
  Commonwealth should be unaffected, but if the perpetrator is in the EU, i guess it could be because British police can no longer access the Shengen information system (SIS) database, or issue European Arrest Warrants (EAW).
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    That's a big if - why would a scammer risk the liability of operating in the EU if they can trivially outsource to somewhere untouchable?
    - Retric 5y ago
      Because criminals operate in every country and the EU has a large and often English speaking population. It’s the same with the US/UK where plenty of scammers operate in each country while targeting the other. Email doesn’t care about national borders, it does care about language.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        > because criminals operate in every country Sure, they do, but what does that matter; or what does "operate" mean in this sense? You can outsource to elsewhere i.e. you can operate anywhere. > the EU has a large and often English speaking population So do many places, the EU is by no means unique in this respect. But there's a reason "cost centres" are being outsourced to India or the Philippines, more often than than the EU. And in the context of criminal operations, "language-speakers" is by far the least important/riskiest factor relative to those that would get you arreseted. > It’s the same with the US/UK Is it? Do you have (statistical) examples? > Email doesn’t care about national borders Wrt liability, (i.e. Arrest Warrants, the context of this thread) email, or at least the senders of, do care; more-so than language. Unless you are implying criminals care more about maximising profit than getting caught?
oefrha 5y ago
From TFA: > While security experts and senior bankers said many fraud attacks could be traced overseas - including from India and West Africa - Britain is also increasingly exporting attacks. > ... > "It's popular to say the fraud threat is imported into the UK, and I don't think that bears analysis," said NECC's Reed. "There is a significant UK nexus to a lot of fraud, our operational experience is showing that."
- avianlyric 5y ago
  From personal experience working on this problem I would strongly agree with idea that a lot of bank fraud is home grown. The police in the UK have a very poor track record of actually dealing with bank fraud. The nature of the crime, and way UK policing works, means there's a significant number of disincentives to actually investigating bank fraud. Two of the biggest showstoppers is location/jurisdiction and training, which police force should investigate? The one where the victim lives, or the one where the criminal lives? Police training focuses almost entirely on crimes with a physical element, if someone robbed your store, then the police know how to help. If they rob your bank account, they haven't foggiest on where to start that kind of investigation. Additionally each individual case of fraud tends to be for small amounts (thousands to tens of thousands), so are frequently ignored. It's only in aggregate that the sums become meaningful to police, but they rarely consider fraud on anything other than a case-by-case basis. The result, as a bank we can tell the police exactly who commited a crime, where they live, what they look like, where they eat breakfast, what their social media handles are etc, and nothing will happen. The report and all the data vanishes into the blackhole known as the NCA.
  - 123pie123 5y ago
    another factor is cost - the police do not have enough resourses to investigate a few weeks ago my car was hit and the driver just drove off without stopping to give details (hit and run) the incident was caught on my dashcam inc car reg plate and faces. After informing the police on 101 - they said sorry they do not investigate hit and run anymore unless a serious injury has occured - no resources available
  - 5y ago
franga2000 5y ago
Yeah, Jim Browning definitely needs to go teach law enforcement how to do their job, preferably in exchange for the biggest consulting cheque the world has ever seen. Ths problem, as always, is that they don't actually want to do that. They'd rather stay incompetent because it lets them let criminals off more easily. We have the same problem where I live but with illegal work for often far below minimum wage. The cops and tax inspectors keep saying they're understaffed, underfunded and undertrained to do anything about the problem, yet two journalism students have been able to catch and report more cases of illegal working conditions than the inspectors do in one year. I used to wonder why, until I saw one of the main white collar cops in the city having a beer with the dude that I know for a fact regularly pays people minimum wage then has them give him half of it back in cash or they're fired. I asked around and it turns out they're childhood friends so he lets him do whatever. And we're not even close to the higher half of the corruption index! I can't imagine how things work in a country that's worse off...
- jl6 5y ago
  Did you report the wage theft crime that you suspected?
  - franga2000 5y ago
    I didn't have any proof, only the word of a few people that were still working for him and couldn't afford to lose their jobs. I do however know that he was reported and investigated at least once by a former employee, but the investigation unsurprisingly found no proof ("agreements" were all verbal and everything was done in cash). The cops said that with just one testimony a conviction was unlikely and nothing really came of it. In general, these things rarely get resolved because the worker can't risk snitching because they'd lose their only source of income and once they leave and get a better job, they're just happy it's behind them and don't pursue it further.
- _hilro 5y ago
  What an absolutely infantile comment.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Also worth noting: * UK infrastructure makes number spoofing very easy. * UK banking legislation (and court rulings) put banks in a difficult position: they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime).
- pjc50 5y ago
  I would be interested in knowing which court rulings those are.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Some of the more recent judgements are outlined here: https://www.mondaq.com/uk/financial-services/1056304/uk-high-court-demarcates-a-bank39s-duty-of-care-when-executing-an-authorised-payment-instructions https://www.mondaq.com/uk/financial-services/1056304/uk-high... But it goes all the way back to common law. Basically the bank is a customers agent and must obey instructions to the best of its ability. It must exercise reasonable skill etc obeying those instructions. But unless it suspects fraud it cannot disobey. To quote: a bank is not required to act as an amateur detective. There is very little room for them to decline a customer instruction once given. It needs to be pretty blatant fraud or otherwise illegal. Sending money to another account is neither on the face of it.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime). Not quite true. Banks are required to accept and process instructions quickly, the general idea being that bank should never prevent an individual from accessing their own money. But protecting a client from fraud is a legitimate reason for slowing down a transaction, you just can't delay it indefinitely. There are plenty of UK banks that will delay outbound bank payments by up to 24 hours if they think there's a good chance someone is being defrauded.
jl6 5y ago
> Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals. Britons could be the criminals too. It's easier to spearphish high value targets when using a familiar "trustworthy" accent and associated mannerisms and cultural knowledge.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
It's also because the britanic banking system decided that, on the safety / usability balance, they would choose usability. Banking in britanic banking system is way easier than anywhere else. I remember when I was a student, they sent a bus to the university, so we could just hop in, arrive at the bank, and open an account as an immigrant in 15 minutes. Try to do that in France, you would get your card, what, next month at best? It was only a matter of time before the criminals realize the door was unlocked and feast on them. In fact, I'm expecting Australia to be next, for the very same reasons. Have you tried to do any paper work in Australia ? It's. So. Simple. Seriously, for a french, it's a video game on easy mode, and you never leave the tutorial. But there is trust everywhere. They are either going down, or make the system harder to work with.
- calvinv 5y ago
  Just an fyi, for at least the last 6 years it is very difficult for any kind of migrant to open an account
accnumnplus1 5y ago
Nothing so complicated. With open borders the UK was a popular destination - and the training ground, and work environment. Now lockdowns have forced people to double down. Some below mentioned the infamous Nigerians, it's usually the Albanian region.

blfr 5y ago

Why would brexit impact police interactions with other commonwealth countries. Or even global policing.

PeterisP 5y ago
AFAIK Europol has been a significant factor in fighting online fraud because much of it is international and the same group targets many EU countries at once.
simonh 5y ago
Because we lost access to many EU police databases and data sharing agreements. We negotiated continued access to some stuff, but there are still some significant gaps. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56529359 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56529359
- Chris2048 5y ago
  How are these databases used to police/punish the stereotypical Nigerian scammer?
  - simonh 5y ago
    I don't think that's a reasonable question, not all scammers are Nigerian. Some are based in the UK, others in Europe. Also the EU had data sharing agreements and collaboration outreach with police forces all over the world that we also lost access to. That's one of the complications with our data sharing with the EU; they have agreements to share data with non-EU countries on the basis that their data is only shared within the EU, which we are now not. Therefore the EU can't grant us access to databases containing that data until we/they have permission from these other countries. We will, and are sorting it out but it's going to take time. Brexit was always going to come with some costs, that should be obvious even if you think on balance it was the right choice, and this is one of them.
    - tremon 5y ago
      The intended interpretation is (Nigerian scam)mer, not (Nigerian) scammer; the scammers aren't Nigerian, the scam is. It refers to one of the earliest well-known forms of a type of e-mail scam: "Hello, I'm a Nigerian prince with a lots of funds but I can't access it, please send me $amount so I can get access and I will return it ten-fold".
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      The poster forgot the bunny quotes ("so-to-say") in «stereotypical "Nigerian scammer"», but added the term 'stereotypical' to lead you there, and the content was clear: certainly the poster did not express or suggest that «scammers are Nigerian». "Scotch tape" is from Minnesota, and the Scots are probably not that disturbed from the underlying idea of "Careful with that glue, Eugene! "Be a Scot", don't waste it". The Nigerian princes happened, terminology spawned, Nigeria has presumably not yet demanded that those scams should be called with Greek letters. Because we are not fools and we know losing one's head is not decapitation, and losing one's mind is not misplacing it on the wrong table. You know what's Eugene even if no-one's called Eugene, and if you don't you can get it's a cultural reference.
phreeza 5y ago
Commonwealth should be unaffected, but if the perpetrator is in the EU, i guess it could be because British police can no longer access the Shengen information system (SIS) database, or issue European Arrest Warrants (EAW).
- Chris2048 5y ago
  That's a big if - why would a scammer risk the liability of operating in the EU if they can trivially outsource to somewhere untouchable?
  - Retric 5y ago
    Because criminals operate in every country and the EU has a large and often English speaking population. It’s the same with the US/UK where plenty of scammers operate in each country while targeting the other. Email doesn’t care about national borders, it does care about language.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      > because criminals operate in every country Sure, they do, but what does that matter; or what does "operate" mean in this sense? You can outsource to elsewhere i.e. you can operate anywhere. > the EU has a large and often English speaking population So do many places, the EU is by no means unique in this respect. But there's a reason "cost centres" are being outsourced to India or the Philippines, more often than than the EU. And in the context of criminal operations, "language-speakers" is by far the least important/riskiest factor relative to those that would get you arreseted. > It’s the same with the US/UK Is it? Do you have (statistical) examples? > Email doesn’t care about national borders Wrt liability, (i.e. Arrest Warrants, the context of this thread) email, or at least the senders of, do care; more-so than language. Unless you are implying criminals care more about maximising profit than getting caught?

oefrha 5y ago

From TFA: > While security experts and senior bankers said many fraud attacks could be traced overseas - including from India and West Africa - Britain is also increasingly exporting attacks. > ... > "It's popular to say the fraud threat is imported into the UK, and I don't think that bears analysis," said NECC's Reed. "There is a significant UK nexus to a lot of fraud, our operational experience is showing that."

avianlyric 5y ago
From personal experience working on this problem I would strongly agree with idea that a lot of bank fraud is home grown. The police in the UK have a very poor track record of actually dealing with bank fraud. The nature of the crime, and way UK policing works, means there's a significant number of disincentives to actually investigating bank fraud. Two of the biggest showstoppers is location/jurisdiction and training, which police force should investigate? The one where the victim lives, or the one where the criminal lives? Police training focuses almost entirely on crimes with a physical element, if someone robbed your store, then the police know how to help. If they rob your bank account, they haven't foggiest on where to start that kind of investigation. Additionally each individual case of fraud tends to be for small amounts (thousands to tens of thousands), so are frequently ignored. It's only in aggregate that the sums become meaningful to police, but they rarely consider fraud on anything other than a case-by-case basis. The result, as a bank we can tell the police exactly who commited a crime, where they live, what they look like, where they eat breakfast, what their social media handles are etc, and nothing will happen. The report and all the data vanishes into the blackhole known as the NCA.
- 123pie123 5y ago
  another factor is cost - the police do not have enough resourses to investigate a few weeks ago my car was hit and the driver just drove off without stopping to give details (hit and run) the incident was caught on my dashcam inc car reg plate and faces. After informing the police on 101 - they said sorry they do not investigate hit and run anymore unless a serious injury has occured - no resources available
- 5y ago

franga2000 5y ago

Yeah, Jim Browning definitely needs to go teach law enforcement how to do their job, preferably in exchange for the biggest consulting cheque the world has ever seen. Ths problem, as always, is that they don't actually want to do that. They'd rather stay incompetent because it lets them let criminals off more easily. We have the same problem where I live but with illegal work for often far below minimum wage. The cops and tax inspectors keep saying they're understaffed, underfunded and undertrained to do anything about the problem, yet two journalism students have been able to catch and report more cases of illegal working conditions than the inspectors do in one year. I used to wonder why, until I saw one of the main white collar cops in the city having a beer with the dude that I know for a fact regularly pays people minimum wage then has them give him half of it back in cash or they're fired. I asked around and it turns out they're childhood friends so he lets him do whatever. And we're not even close to the higher half of the corruption index! I can't imagine how things work in a country that's worse off...

jl6 5y ago
Did you report the wage theft crime that you suspected?
- franga2000 5y ago
  I didn't have any proof, only the word of a few people that were still working for him and couldn't afford to lose their jobs. I do however know that he was reported and investigated at least once by a former employee, but the investigation unsurprisingly found no proof ("agreements" were all verbal and everything was done in cash). The cops said that with just one testimony a conviction was unlikely and nothing really came of it. In general, these things rarely get resolved because the worker can't risk snitching because they'd lose their only source of income and once they leave and get a better job, they're just happy it's behind them and don't pursue it further.
_hilro 5y ago
What an absolutely infantile comment.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Also worth noting: * UK infrastructure makes number spoofing very easy. * UK banking legislation (and court rulings) put banks in a difficult position: they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime).

pjc50 5y ago
I would be interested in knowing which court rulings those are.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Some of the more recent judgements are outlined here: https://www.mondaq.com/uk/financial-services/1056304/uk-high-court-demarcates-a-bank39s-duty-of-care-when-executing-an-authorised-payment-instructions https://www.mondaq.com/uk/financial-services/1056304/uk-high... But it goes all the way back to common law. Basically the bank is a customers agent and must obey instructions to the best of its ability. It must exercise reasonable skill etc obeying those instructions. But unless it suspects fraud it cannot disobey. To quote: a bank is not required to act as an amateur detective. There is very little room for them to decline a customer instruction once given. It needs to be pretty blatant fraud or otherwise illegal. Sending money to another account is neither on the face of it.
avianlyric 5y ago
> they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime). Not quite true. Banks are required to accept and process instructions quickly, the general idea being that bank should never prevent an individual from accessing their own money. But protecting a client from fraud is a legitimate reason for slowing down a transaction, you just can't delay it indefinitely. There are plenty of UK banks that will delay outbound bank payments by up to 24 hours if they think there's a good chance someone is being defrauded.

jl6 5y ago

> Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals. Britons could be the criminals too. It's easier to spearphish high value targets when using a familiar "trustworthy" accent and associated mannerisms and cultural knowledge.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

It's also because the britanic banking system decided that, on the safety / usability balance, they would choose usability. Banking in britanic banking system is way easier than anywhere else. I remember when I was a student, they sent a bus to the university, so we could just hop in, arrive at the bank, and open an account as an immigrant in 15 minutes. Try to do that in France, you would get your card, what, next month at best? It was only a matter of time before the criminals realize the door was unlocked and feast on them. In fact, I'm expecting Australia to be next, for the very same reasons. Have you tried to do any paper work in Australia ? It's. So. Simple. Seriously, for a french, it's a video game on easy mode, and you never leave the tutorial. But there is trust everywhere. They are either going down, or make the system harder to work with.

calvinv 5y ago
Just an fyi, for at least the last 6 years it is very difficult for any kind of migrant to open an account

accnumnplus1 5y ago

Nothing so complicated. With open borders the UK was a popular destination - and the training ground, and work environment. Now lockdowns have forced people to double down. Some below mentioned the infamous Nigerians, it's usually the Albanian region.