Lloyds Bank has issued a stark warning to all social media users as a rising number of people are losing out on around £570 each on average.
It comes as data shows Facebook and Instagram purchase scams are expected to cost people in the UK more than £27m this year alone. Lloyds said the combination of a rising popularity of online shopping and a surge in fraudsters is leading to people paying for goods that simply don't exist.
Victims can often be lured in by the promise of cut-price or hard-to-find items, the banking giant said.
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People are asked to send money directly from their account to another account via bank transfer, which provides very little consumer protection when something goes wrong.
New research by Lloyds Banking Group found that more than two thirds (68%) of all purchase scams now start on Facebook, including Facebook Marketplace, and Instagram. The latest figures show someone in the UK falls victim to a shopping scam across these two platforms every seven minutes.
The bank found that clothes, trainers, gaming consoles and mobile phones are 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, Lloyds' fraud prevention director, told the ECHO: 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.
“Banks have been at the forefront of tackling the epidemic of scams, but they cannot fight it alone. 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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