Banks, Telecos, And Big Tech Work Together To Monitor Scammers

A group of banks, Big Tech companies, and telecomm’s groups have joined forces to talk to known scammers and gather information in order to stop the spread of scams.

Stop Scams UK is an alliance of 21 organizations, including the biggest banks in the UK, the telecoms companies Three and Talk Talk, and the Big Tech companies Meta, Google, and Microsoft.

The group was started in 2021 to run a short code phone service for bank users to report fraud. Since then, it has been working hard on data sharing initiatives to figure out how information can be shared between organizations better and more effectively.

Stop Scams UK’s new plan is to use 300 known fraud phone numbers and 100 known fraud email addresses to talk to scammers, find out how they work in a stealthy way, and use that knowledge to shut them down.

Stop Scams will focus on breaking up money mule networks. These are groups of people who let crooks move fake cash through their accounts to hide their tracks in the banking system.

Simon Miller, director of policy and communications at Stop Scams UK, told CityAM: “The pilot will provide extremely valuable information on how scams operate,” saying it would “create an incredibly rich, first-hand evidence of scammers’ modus operandi.”