A bank has issued a warning to social media users over "purchase scams", where victims are conned into paying for things that don't exist.
Analysis from Lloyds Bank found that two thirds of 25 million reported cases of purchase scams originated on the Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. The bank also found that someone falls victim on Meta-owned platforms every seven minutes.
Victims of these types of scams are typically lured in by the promise of cut-price or hard-to-find items that are often advertised on social media. People are then usually asked to send money directly from their account to another account through bank transfer - this is also known as a Faster Payment.
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However, this payment method provides very little consumer protection when something goes wrong, reports The Mirror. The bank found that clothes, trainers, gaming consoles and mobile phones were among the most common goods being falsely advertised.
Across the industry, the average amount being lost by the victims of purchase scams is around £570. Liz Ziegler, fraud prevention director at Lloyds Banking Group, said: "Social media has become the Wild West of online shopping in recent years, with very few checks in place to verify who is selling what.
"This has left consumers increasingly exposed to ruthless fraudsters, with hundreds of new victims targeted every day and tens of millions of pounds flowing to organised crime gangs each year."
Liz explained how high street banks had been at the forefront of tackling the "epidemic of scams" but they couldn't fight it alone. She added: "It’s high time tech companies stepped up to share responsibility for protecting their own customers. This means stopping scams at source and contributing to refunds when their platforms are used to defraud innocent victims.”
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, said: "This is an industry-wide issue and scammers are using increasingly sophisticated methods to defraud people in a range of ways including email, SMS and offline. We don’t want anyone to fall victim to these criminals which is why our platforms have systems to block scams, financial services advertisers now have to be FCA authorised and we run consumer awareness campaigns on how to spot fraudulent behaviour.
"People can also report this content in a few simple clicks and we work with the police to support their investigations."
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