Ten nations tell social media, banks, and telcos to get better at stopping scams
- Reference: 1710396190
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/03/14/global_fraud_summit_communique_meta/
- Source link:
The call came in a [1]communiqué issued in the wake of the Global Fraud Summit – a meeting attended by reps from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States – which wrapped on Monday .
The communiqué is a broadly phrased document, as is typical of the output from international gabfests. But it does get specific in its assertion that "Fraudsters operate at scale, exploiting telecommunications networks, cyberspace and a population that spends an increasing amount of time online."
[2]
Attendees therefore suggested a four-pronged approach to addressing fraud:
Building international understanding, partnerships and capabilities;
Better empowering the public, including by making it easier to recover money lost to scams;
Pursuing organized fraudsters acting transnationally, including by data-sharing among law enforcement agencies;
Preventing the reach and means of fraudsters, with special emphasis on having tech companies, telcos and financial institutions do more to stop crims using their platforms.
Telcos are already under fire for often losing the never-ending game of whac-a-mole with scam callers, while banks are being pressured to offer better responses when their customers inadvertently send money to crims.
But after the summit, Australia's assistant treasurer Stephen Jones [3]told waiting media that social media platforms in particular need to clean up their acts. He named "Meta in particular" – adding "You're not above the law."
[4]Change Healthcare registers pulse after crippling ransomware attack
[5]Lawsuit claims gift card fraud is the gift that keeps on giving, to Google
[6]Duo face 20 years in prison over counterfeit iPhone scam
[7]FTC asks normal folks if they'd like AI impersonation scam protection, too
There's a double entendre there. Australia this week [8]released its latest scam data and – while incidents dropped pleasingly – Jones said Meta platforms carry 80 percent of scams detected down under.
Australia is also beefing with Meta over its decision to [9]back away from a past commitment to pay news organizations for the right to link to their work.
[10]
That's a fight for the future. For now, Jones brushed aside suggestions that stopping fraud is hard for Meta to do.
"These guys are the biggest technologists in the world. They employ the best information technologists, the best engineers, the best process experts in the world. They are the biggest and the best," the minister argued. "Don't tell me they can't do more."
[11]
Those words came a day before Meta showed off how much more it can do. In a [12]post by members of its engineering team, the social network kraken trumpeted the imminent debut of two AI training clusters packing 24,000 GPUs apiece. They're part of an infrastructure dedicated to AI that will soon have 350,000 Nvidia H100 accelerators in service – and computing power equivalent to 600,000 of those GPUs – all to be used for generative AI.
Minister Jones may have a point. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/communique-from-the-global-fraud-summit/global-fraud-summit-communique-11-march-2024
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZfLYyCsy6rWQvqHIi9rougAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2024/03/13/meta-online-scams
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/change_healthcare_restores_first_system/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/07/google_sued_for_profiting_gift_card_fraud/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/counterfeit_iphone_scam/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/16/ftc_ai_fakes/
[8] https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news-alerts/national-anti-scam-centre-releases-second-quarterly-update
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/01/facebook_news_killed_usa_australia/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZfLYyCsy6rWQvqHIi9rougAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZfLYyCsy6rWQvqHIi9rougAAAYg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/12/data-center-engineering/building-metas-genai-infrastructure/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
you forgot:
... responsible at the C- and board-level. With jail time.
You don't think that the end user bares some responsibility for allowing themselves to be scammed?
Presumably, the platforms make money from these scams and so benefit from fraud. It's not difficult to imagine that they have no interest in preventing it. Quite the reverse.
Of course they could do more to prevent it and they should.
"making it easier to recover money lost to scams"
I don't know what is going on on social media, I don't have any account. But, here in France, there is a platform called LeBonCoin (the Good Corner) that allows people to sell stuff they don't want any more. It's basically a nation-wide garage sale. Prices are reasonable because it's not Ebay, so people who want to gouge find their offerings languguishing.
But the important part is since LBC integrated a secure payment system. It's not secure as far as banks are concerned (well, not any more than elsewhere), it's secure as far as the user is concerned. When I purchase an item on LBC, I can use its payment system or I can pay directly. If I choose LBC's system, I pay the money to LBC. LBC then notifies the seller that the money has been paid and the seller can send the item. When I receive the item, I notify LBC which then releases the money to the seller.
If I'm the one selling, the system works in reverse, of course.
There is obviously the case where the buyer lies about receiving the item, I don't know what LBC does about that but, when I am selling via LBC, I am specifically encouraged to send the item with postal trace - so I'm guessing if the buyer tries to stiff me, LBC will contact La Poste and get the record of that item.
In any case, I've never heard of wiespread problems or scams on LBC. I think the payment system has a lot to do with it. Maybe that sort of system should be widely copied on other platforms ?
Hard Way that will never work: tell social media, banks, and telcos to get better at stopping scams.
Easy Way that would work very quickly: change the law to make social media, banks, and telcos jointly and severally responsible for all losses suffered by members of the public who are scammed via social media, banks, and telcos.