Social Media: Scam Adverts and Fraudulent Content

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the role social media platforms play in enabling scam adverts and fraudulent content.

The Government take seriously the criminal abuse of online advertising to promote scams, distribute malware and launch phishing attacks. All social media platforms and advertisers must play a role in driving out fraudulent activity. Under the Online Safety Act, the largest social media and search services will be required to address fraudulent adverts on their platforms. More can be done, and further action will be set out in the Government’s forthcoming fraud strategy, for which I am responsible.

My Lords, we face a wave of increasingly sophisticated AI-generated scams, yet, despite what the Minister has said, Ofcom’s updated road map has pushed the consultation on the codes of practice for fraudulent advertising into mid-2026, meaning that new online safety protections are unlikely to be fully in force until 2027. Given the rapid evolution of AI fraud, what steps are the Government—and indeed the Minister, as the designated Fraud Minister—taking to speed up the vital protections provided by the Act? Will the Government ensure that robust action against all scam advertising is included in the fraud strategy and will be quickly implemented?

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I met with Ofcom recently. I know that the facts he has laid before the House are correct, but Ofcom wishes to proceed at pace to ensure that it can bring that regulation into power as soon as possible. Early in the new year, I will produce the revised fraud strategy. The previous Government had a three-year fraud strategy. We have updated that. It has taken about 15 months to work on it. The fraud strategy will look at a number of key threats, and the emergence and future threats of AI will be a key aspect of the government responses. I hope I can bring the fraud strategy before the House in relatively short order in the new year for consideration, discussion and implementation.

My Lords, it is becoming increasingly apparent that overseas, in different countries, there are huge numbers of almost industrial-scale scams going on. Will the new fraud strategy include a way of tackling some of the international problems that we have? Is my noble friend the Minister liaising with some of those countries where we know that this is a really prevalent activity?

I am grateful to my noble friend for that. The Government have already signed a United Nations resolution against fraud, and we are hosting a conference in Vienna in March next year to try to bring together international action on the very issues that my noble friend has mentioned. Independently, I went to Nigeria in April this year and signed an agreement with the Nigerian Government on fraud and scammers, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has done one with Vietnam recently, and we intend to expand that further to other key nations. It is vital that we have international co-operation to tackle areas where scammers are operating from, very often against the will of the host Government.

My Lords, fraud is not falling, despite all the efforts that have been put into it so far. The National Crime Agency estimates that 67% of fraud is cyber-enabled. It says:

“Social media platforms are a key facilitator of authorised push payments frauds”.

Social media platforms and telecoms are the main route by which fraud comes to this country from overseas scammers, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. At the moment, banks pick up the full cost of reimbursing fraud victims. Banks have a key role in preventing fraud but they are not the facilitators of it. Surely the time has come to make social media platforms and telecom companies pay their share of the losses that people suffer as a result of their facilitation of fraud.

I am grateful to the noble Lord. He is absolutely right that the banks are effectively subsidising fraud results and are leading to the repayment of an amount of the fraud that is taking place. He is also right that a large portion of that fraud, which is around 44% of all crime, goes through telecommunication companies. We recently established a brand new fraud charter with telecom companies, which I believe will reduce fraud via telephone communication significantly over the next 12 months. In the fraud strategy we will discuss the potential for reducing fraud through telecommunications platforms and through platforms such as Meta/Facebook and others, which are a significant gateway to fraud. The noble Lord is absolutely right, but I will have to reflect on those matters as part of the forthcoming fraud strategy.

My Lords, can the Minister tell us what work the Government are doing around protecting young people in particular? I have been contacted by a number of student-age young people who have found themselves, through social media, caught up in money laundering. They are sent a message asking to borrow their bank account and the money is exchanged equitably, as far as they are concerned, but it is then investigated by the bank and found out to be money laundering—an offence they can never remove from their history. Can the Government do a piece of work around protecting young people from money laundering?

The noble Lord is absolutely right. The Government have accepted that there is a challenge in that area. There are resources going into educational opportunities, particularly targeted at university students, to help them avoid money laundering. Some months ago I visited a scheme—as it happens, in my home area of north Wales—where educational opportunities were being undertaken by regional organised crime agencies to meet students to explain how money laundering works and how they can become victims of money laundering without realising they are involved in it. There is a great educational opportunity and we are trying to work through that, but self-evidently I will continue to look at what more can be done.

My Lords, how will the Government ensure that the new fraud strategy leads to a genuine increase in fraud cases being properly investigated and taken to court? Will the Government make clear that success will be judged not by the volume of fraud cases reported but by the convictions secured, the investigations opened and the charges made?

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. One of the things that we are trying to do—again, trailing the fraud strategy—is to ensure that we have better criminal justice outcomes for investigations. We are just starting—this will become clearer when the fraud strategy is produced—a better journey for victims of fraud in terms of reporting, keeping them informed and getting to criminal justice outcomes. There is a real wish by the National Crime Agency in particular and the Serious Fraud Office to look at how we can bring criminals to justice. A number of measures have already taken place where we have seized assets and brought people to court, and I want to see that continue. It is vital that we make the UK the hardest place possible for fraudsters to operate, which means not just protection and better investment in telecommunication platform issues but putting in an element of serious risk for those fraudsters to ensure that they end up behind bars or lose their assets.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the regulators often use long consultation periods to do nothing and that the general public want action, not consultation?

It is important that we get these things right—I say that to my noble friend in the spirit of camaraderie—and sometimes there are issues that take a while to work through. If he is referring to the question of Ofcom and advertising that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, raised, there is a wish for Ofcom to get it right and to ensure that whatever it does is legally secure in getting it right. I want to give it breathing space to do that. The direction of travel is there to ensure that fraudulent adverts are taken down and not used as a gateway for the very issues that other noble Lords have mentioned today.

Research by the UK Safer Internet Centre has shown that just under half of eight to 17 year-olds have been scammed online, with 79% of that age group having come across online scams at least monthly. What action are the Government taking to reduce the impact of scamming on school-aged children, who appear to be particularly at risk?

There are two areas that we want to look at. Number one is education. All of us are the first port of call to reduce scamming, which means that we all, including young people, need to watch out for the signs of scams and know what those protective measures are. That goes back to the noble Lord’s point earlier about money muling. We need to ensure that we raise awareness and put that into the curriculum via our school system. But it is not just us who have to have a role in stopping scams; ultimately, the state has a responsibility to track down the scammers, put protective measures in place and stop that happening. That goes back to us ensuring that the telecom companies and the platforms take down fraudulent activity ASAP so that young people in particular are not drawn into what would end up being a cost to them and damaging to their mental as well as financial health.