New data from Barclays has revealed today that young people are five and a half times more likely to fall victim to scams than those over 65, with 30 per cent of 18-24 year old scam victims not believing ‘there is not much to do’ to protect themselves in future.
However, impersonation scams, where a criminal pretends to be from the police or the victim’s bank and asks the victim to make a payment, sees the largest concentration in the over 65s. These can be particularly devastating, with a third of cases reported to Barclays over £5000.
Nearly two thirds of high value shopping scams are from London, East and South East England, whilst Plymouth, Sheffield and Southampton are also identified as scam hotspots.
Barclays has revealed the findings as it launches new measures to fight crooks, including becoming the first UK bank to introduce a new call verification feature for its online and mobile banking customers so they can be sure the call from their bank is genuine.
Ross Martin, Barclays’ Head of Digital Safety, said:“Barclays has stepped up its mission to educate customers about the growing risks of scams, investing more than £18 million during the past two years on our national fraud and scam prevention campaign. As part of our continued efforts to beat scammers, our new call verification feature will give customers extra confidence when picking up the phone to someone from Barclays.”
In London, Plymouth and Sheffield, one in 10 people (11 per cent) have been scammed in the last year. Looking at the last five years, this figure in London jumps to one in five people (19 per cent), 17 per cent of people in Plymouth and one in 10 (13 per cent) people in Sheffield. Looking at the UK as a whole, this translates to one in five people being a victim of scam, with exactly half of the victims (50 per cent) under the age of 34.
UK’s top ten scam cities
London & Plymouth
Sheffield & Southampton
Manchester
Liverpool
Newcastle & Birmingham
Belfast
Leeds and Norwich
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