Barclays help islanders combat fraud

Thursday 11 October 2018

Barclays have hosted two fraud awareness sessions in Guernsey for the University of the Third Age (U3A), to help their members identify fraud attempts and to familiarise themselves with the tactics of online and telephone scams.

The events took place at the Digital Greenhouse during National Coding Week and were led by Barclays Digital Eagles, Barclays employees who give practical and helpful advice about the internet.

New UK data from Barclays has revealed that impersonation scams, where a criminal pretends to be from the police or the individual’s bank and asks the victim to make a payment, sees the largest concentration of victims in the over 65s. A third of cases reported to Barclays have resulted in the targets losing more than £5,000. 

But it is not just older people that are at risk. According to figures from Barclays, everyone should be on their guard against fraud with young people (18-24) in the UK being five and a half times more likely to fall victim to scams overall than those over 65.

Gerald Overstall, Ecosystems Manager, from Barclays, said: “People of all ages can take steps to protect themselves against fraud – particularly if they know what to do if they are contacted by a scammer. We are always working to create new measures to protect our customers, and with our Digital Eagles we are also trying to help our customers to protect themselves.

“In fact we estimate that 80% of cyber related crime could be prevented by users being ‘cyber clean’”.

Barclays is committed to beating scammers and has invested £18m. into their national fraud and scam prevention campaign over the past two years. Barclays top tips for preventing scams are: 

1. Never share your PIN, Passcode or Password with anyone – even if they claim to be from the police or your bank.
2. Do not click on any links, or open any attachments in emails from people you don’t recognise.
3. No genuine bank or the police would ask you to transfer money to a ‘safe account’ – ignore anyone who asks you to do this, whether it’s by phone, email or any other method.
4. Watch out for deals that look too good to be true.

Pictured: One of the recent fraud sessions hosted by Barclays.