A letter from Google to Big Tech
Tomorrow the Treasury Select Committee will call representatives from across tech companies to explain the role we each play in helping prevent financial scammers exploiting online platforms.
In the UK, people are targeted by increasingly sophisticated scammers on and offline, causing financial and emotional difficulty for many people.
According to UK Finance, in 2020, total fraud loss was £1.26 billion.
Criminal gangs rely on multiple malicious methods, from phishing emails, spoof phone calls and texts, shopping scams and impersonation scams – or attempting to run scam advertising on social media and search engines.
A problem of this scale requires cross-industry collaboration.
Google was the first technology company to join industry body Stop Scams UK to develop best practices.
Alongside longstanding and robust financial products and services policies, engaging with regulators has been a vital tool in getting our response right to rising crime.
Thanks to policy updates introduced in consultation with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), we know more about the businesses and third party relationships operating on our platform. We receive FCA alerts to root out bad actors.
Our most recent policy which was launched earlier this month, requires financial services advertisers to demonstrate they are authorised by the FCA or qualify for one of the exemptions to advertise on our platforms. Robust action was needed.
I am pleased to see this new system making a positive impact, but I don’t underestimate the scale of the issue. While bad actors actively attempt to circumvent our systems, our work will never be finished.
We implore the rest of the tech industry to follow suit.
Yes, the magnitude of scammer tactics evolve at speed, but so do the talents and protective tactics being implemented to fight against them (not to mention machine learning). So does the continued development of our policies, industry partnerships and public awareness efforts.