Harmless fun, right? Except you’ve possibly given away passwords, answers to security questions and clues to your age, where you live and maybe some of your interests — all great leads for fraudsters trawling the web for information to help them crack credit card accounts or fool people into handing over money.
Fraud targeting consumers and transactions online is rising everywhere, and we all need to be smarter about not getting caught out. Banks are running fast to keep up with risks, but they need help from telecoms as well as from internet and social media companies. And legislation may be the only way to encourage their cooperation amid concerns over data privacy and commercial interests.
The U.K. seems to be one of the biggest targets for crooks, according to experts, in large part because it’s a wealthy country with high adoption of digital services, and English is one of the world’s most commonly spoken languages. More than 750 million pounds ($992 million) was lost to fraud in the first half of 2021 in Britain, up from 582 million pounds in the same period last year, according to U.K. Finance, a trade body.
This kind of theft was already…
