Martin Lewis On Scammers: It's 'Not A Victimless Crime It Destroys Lives' | Good Morning Britain

foreign [Music] do you know I was watching you early talking about that absolutely Only Yesterday some because I'm not on Facebook and Only Yesterday somebody said on Facebook that there was some ridiculous sort of losing weight nonsense that they'd put my face on and it's infuriating isn't it it's infuriating so please please please do not fall for the scammers no please you do not endorse weight loss products no no absolutely not okay uh Lorraine thanks very much indeed yeah mine is uh keto pills I get people I would imagine would have been able to see through the scam contacting me saying I'm desperate to lose weight do your keto pills work I do not endorse cell make manufacture or back any pills for losing weight a security guard to type a place I went to regularly once came and touched me and said I'm putting money into your cryptocurrency scheme and I said no no no it's not a cryptic it's not mine it's a scam advert he said no it isn't it's you I said no it's a scam advert I promise you I don't talk about cryptocurrency they're not me those adverts and he said no it's you and he got the advert he showed me the advert and he said look it's you and I said but it's fake he said no it's not and he had been so brainwashed that even though it's me who was in the advert and me saying it was a scam he didn't believe me these people are very clever and vicious we have uh the ninja Cameron executive of the national cyber security Center Lindy Cameron with us now and your face has been used Lindsey and Cameron hasn't it that's right so like you basically people have imitated me in an attempt to scam people and actually one of the things we're talking about at the conference today is the fact that some of the future Technologies might make that even easier so large language models chat GPT are some of your employees will have heard about and actually means that it's easier to write you know beautifully to crafted emails or English for example that mean that you can't spot those spelling mistakes or tells that might have helped you spot a scam in the past so they're really plausible it's incredibly important therefore the people to us it's not just written either because we're hearing in the charts they're banging Banning AI versions of singers who aren't the real singers so in future I may be doing a scam advert where you can see and hear me that's been done by AI this is dangerous and I know you're not police but we do you not think we have a fundamental problem in this country that we do not prosecute scammers we don't prosecute them we don't investigate them people report them people get in touch me and say I've reported it nothing happens in the social media companies and we do not have the police are not funded to investigate surely it doesn't matter what you say unless we're going to start Prosecuting people so it's really important that we recognize the harm that is done to victims with these kinds of scams I mean these are thousands of scams that affect individuals and collectively it has a very significant economic economic impact so it is really important that we take this seriously but actually there are things that people can do to help so at the moment only about I think a third of fishing animals are reported to us we want people to help us by reporting phishing emails for example to report at fishing.gov.uk report you know text message scams to 7726 by telling us what's happening it's easier for us to spot the things that are happening at scale and then go after some of those bigger sources of that crime I'm I'm sorry and you know that I support that and I've told people to do all those things that I've worked with you on this but I go back to the point if we do not prosecute the scammers when they steal people's money if we do not take the money back if we do not have criminal sanctions then there is little you can do we need a fundamental change in policing in this country don't we look at fraud and scams so our law enforcement response to that is part of it but it's equally important that we try and make the technology safe and resilient so part of what we're talking about today are the kind of future technologies that we need to build security into from the get-go it's too easy at the moment for people to to take advantage of known vulnerabilities to use easy ways in to try and run these kind of scams and so it's important we think about how to try and make technology secure by Design as we just as we say so trying to make sure that it's actually safe for people to use we shouldn't expect people to have to be experts in technology to protect themselves and their families we want to make sure Technologies are set up so that the default is safe and then if you want to you can turn on the extra features the the impact of scams is visceral it affects people's Financial physical and mental health uh I got its uh stvs got in touch with me last night about that spoken to a woman called Jennifer right who saw a scam ad which had been used with my face and name on it and she got drawn in and she lost 150 and pounds and her life is devastated here's a clip from that as of the 3rd of January that's when they coerced me for one of a better word into taking out loans to the value of twenty thousand pounds Eddie I've never been a date in my life I've never taken out a loan in my life I've never had a credit card bill I can actually believe what's happened to me um it's terrific absolutely horrific oh Jenna 100 and and the problem for me is these people have perverted my reputation to steal that money can she get that money I mean how does presumably the bank will take a view on that which has got to be compassionate which is not necessarily sure that she will get the money back and to get to be fair to the banks if they've done all their checks right why are they the ones who have to pay up and that is the problem I mean I have a big issue with social media companies not being the ones who pay up in these circumstances when they're the ones who promote the adverts with my face and name in even though I've reported it on many times I I have to be careful what I say here right but sometimes I read political runes okay because of meetings I have I think we are going to see a fundamental shift in the prioritization of fraud strategy coming from the government over the next few months I'm hoping that they deliver a fundamental shift yeah Lindsay Cameron I think uh I mean that's encouraging but you've already addressed two things one is it doesn't seem to be enough police power in in going after these people but your response seems to be let's try and cut it off at the source so let's just take one example an email with a link in it most people know don't click on a link you can't forgive people who do click on it because frankly you know someone's email mailbox may have been hacked and therefore you think for instance you're getting a email from your son and he says I need you know can you help me out just click on this link and how can we build resilience into a system to make sure that those emails aren't sent out those links aren't dodgy and people get money that way that's right so so first of all what we can help people is recognize when that's happening and spot it so so you talked about the emotional impact this house on people and one thing as we say is if you feel that emotional pressure then pause and think am I confident that's real have I checked it but what we're also doing in National cyber security Center is thinking about how we do try and recognize that recognize that at scale so part of why we ask people to forward us those fishing emails is because then we can automatically take down sites that are hosting that kind of activity or block that and in particular for the public sector of what we're able to do for example is block people collect connecting to known malicious domains we're thinking about ways we can work with the tech companies to try and stop this at scale it is a huge challenge well the many of those tech companies are of course being paid by scammers to do scam adverts I mean it is worth remembering that I'm just going to change the subject very briefly because you're also talking about the risk post by China and Russia with hacking to our infrastructure how worried should we be as individuals and as a Nation about the potential for those type of inter-country hacking and cyber warfare effectively so Oliver died in the challenge of dutchieve Lancaster is talking today about the kind of state aligned groups we've seen in Russia who weak or concerned pose an increased threat to our critical National infrastructure that means most people in the country don't need to worry about that it's quite targeted at people who run our energy companies our telecoms companies our financial sector and we're asking them to be more Vigilant to this kind of state aligned activity so hacktiversity or sympathetic to Russia's position and who want to use that power to do damage to the UK but it's a really important for all of our citizens that actually that the rcni companies do that but it can be as granular as attacking the the phone companies who Supply GP surgeries so that people can't get through to their doctors I mean these are that that's the type of real world examples that are happening isn't it so that's the kind of thing mostly we've seen that coming from cyber criminals so most of those instances are actually cyber criminals who are using ransomware if they're holding to Ransom organizations who are then not able to provide services or support their customers and asking them to pay money to effectively get Services turned back on we don't recommend that by the way that's again not something most individuals should worry about that's mostly organizations that need to think about what they do with their data and how they protect their key services and get them back up and running again as quickly as possible to make sure customers and small businesses aren't impacted we've actually issued some really great advice recently for small businesses and sole Traders and we told them to help check their own cyber security and got a couple of tools on our website to help them do that to make sure that small businesses who don't have it experts or sole Traders are working for themselves that they've got a way to understand where they might be vulnerable to some of those issues all right Linda Cameron thank you very much indeed like and you know what I I it is and I just feel if you look at the rise of AI particularly chat GPT it was only launched a couple of months ago and now students are using it to write their essays and my wife used it to make a program on radio 4. that's right she did yeah and uh people can uh use it to write legal letters and they're getting results with that the chancellor used it to write some of his speech we know it's not just words as you say AI can right now create a convincing Martin Lewis who can actually do a TV type ad in some ways it'd be nice but but not in all ways no and look and I am at the moment I'll be honest Susanna I sued Facebook a number of years ago the number of scams I'm seeing with me and on Facebook again is rising at an exponential rate we can't let them out right I have had I have had conversations that I I don't know if I've got the energy to sue again but we are getting close but but ultimately you know the thing that puts me off doing it why is it my responsibility to please why have we got not got a government that is acting on on properly protecting people from fraud why when I tell people to report it to action fraud and elsewhere do they report it which is right but then nothing is done about it so there's a little bit of reticence of whether I need to go I want to go through all of that again because actually we need the Online safety Bill to stop scams and we need proper policing and police to be resourced to police fraud it is not a victimless crime it destroys life look at Jennifer and I lost 150 Grand

Channel: Good Morning Britain

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Id: D0qcjeOv1pw

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023