Meta Teams Up with Banks to Target Fraudsters

Meta has announced what it claims to be a “first-of-its-kind” information-sharing agreement with UK banks in a bid to arrest a growing social media fraud epidemic.

The Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE) will see high street lenders share threat intelligence with the social media giant so that it can take more targeted action to remove accounts perpetrating fraud and scams.

FIRE has already been trialed by NatWest and Metro Bank over the past six months, according to Meta. The pilot enabled the social media giant to remove 20,000 accounts run by fraudsters as part of a major concert ticket scam targeting US and UK users.

The initiative, run under the Stop Scams UK cross-industry body, resulted in 185 URLs being shared with Meta. The firm said the intelligence it received has also helped strengthen its fraud detection capabilities going forward.

Read more on fraud losses: Authorized Push Payment Fraud Cases Surge 12% Annually

Spokespeople from the banking industry, City of London Police and the National Economic Crime Centre queued up to praise FIRE.

Adrian Searle, director of the National Economic Crime Centre, explained that the project helpfully brings together data from across the banking and tech sectors.

“It follows the establishment of the Online Fraud Charter in 2023, in which leading tech companies signed a voluntary agreement, recognizing and seeking to reduce the risk of fraud and financial exploitation of UK citizens on their platforms,” he added.

“Partnership between the public and the private sector is key to preventing this pervasive threat. We look forward to working with Meta, building on FIRE’s early success, sharing data across sectors to impact the fraud threat at scale.”

A Formidable Task

However, the scale of the task is formidable. A study published yesterday by cross-party think tank the Social Market Foundation (SMF) estimated that over 10 million Brits have fallen victim to fraud since 2021, costing the wider economy an estimated £16bn ($21bn).

The UK’s banks have long argued not only that social media companies should cooperate more closely to tackle fraud, but that they should also share the burden of reimbursing customers for losses.

In February, Revolut released research claiming that 60% of fraud reported to it in 2023 originated on Meta-owned platforms such as Instagram – the majority of which were investment scams.

New rules to be brought in by the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) next week will force financial providers to reimburse customers who are victims of scams – including APP fraud up to £415,000 – unless the customer has been grossly negligent or the payment is made abroad.   

Image credit: Cristian Valderas / Shutterstock.com