While you are reading this sentence someone somewhere in Ireland is being targeted by faceless criminals with a laser-sharp focus on conning them out of their life savings and ruining their lives.
It might be someone you know or someone you are related to. It might even be you.
According to official figures, close to €1 million is stolen from Irish consumers every day by a growing number of increasingly complex and plausible scams delivered via a dizzying array of platforms at a speed most of us cannot comprehend.
A recent report from Bank of Ireland suggested that 82 per cent of the Irish population are targeted by fraudsters at least once a month, with more than one in three contending with the menace weekly.
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Despite the fact that this fraudulent activity would be virtually impossible without the advances made by wildly profitable tech companies, social media platforms, mobile phone operators and financial institutions, far too often the ones left picking up the tab – and the pieces – are the victims.
There was a time when scams were almost pleasingly stupid. The promises of riches from Saharan princesses with suitcases full of blood diamonds would routinely make email boxes ping. The premises of the promises were so outlandish – and the grammar and spelling so shocking – that the ruses could be spotted a mile away.
We didn’t know it then but we were living in the good old days. These days the scams are increasingly plausible and sinister, with criminals ever more adept at using the most advanced social engineering techniques to steal from us.
What is more troubling is that things are about to get much worse with the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI).
Imagine a version of the “Mam, my phone is broken” text-based scam you might have come across – only with AI deployed to replicate your child’s voice and respond to your queries in real time and in a fashion that is entirely believable. Now you have some idea where we could be heading.
What makes the world of scams so attractive to criminals – and so frustrating for everyone else – is that it is cross-border, anonymous and almost impossible to trace. That allows fraudsters to act with what sometimes seems like impunity.
They can also move at a speed banks, tech companies, law enforcers and regulators can’t, or won’t, match. Cheap technologies such as number cloning and internet telephony allow easy entry into the criminal market. As a result, hundreds of millions of euro are lost by Irish people each year, with the industry globally worth countless billions of euro.
According to the Commission for the Regulation of Communication, ComReg, the “total quantifiable harm” caused by what it describes as a “blight” is “conservatively estimated at over €300 million each year”.
Around €115 million is lost due to scam text messages and €187 million to bogus calls. And of course there are other scams beyond ComReg’s remit, including romance scams, investment scams and rental scams, to name just three.
Comreg also wants telecommunications operators whose services are piggy-backed on by criminals to be more heavily invested in the war on scammers. They must develop ways to stop the bogus messages at source so we never have to see them
So what can be done?
Financial institutions and State agencies are blue in the face calling for greater awareness. Knowledge is a powerful tool, and more must be done to warn people about the dangers of scams, both the long-standing and the emerging ones.
[ Eight scams Irish consumers should be wary ofOpens in new window ]
But that places the responsibility almost exclusively on the victim. That is not fair. Imagine a world in which the only response to violent crime was to encourage people to have their wits about them and avoid the dodgiest of areas and the most aggressive of people? No one would stand for it.
Alongside awareness campaigns, banks, tech and telecoms companies must share the burden. It is not a great stretch to suggest that if these multibillion euro enterprises were suddenly at risk of losing significant sums of money themselves, they would act faster to bring the “blight” under control.
The banks have promised a shared fraud database which will allow them to act in a more concerted fashion to get advance sight of potentially criminal activities and stop them in their tracks. This will be welcome.
ComReg also wants telecommunications operators whose services are piggybacked on by criminals to be more heavily invested in the war on scammers. They must develop ways to stop the bogus messages at source so we never have to see them. And the social media platforms need to do more to weed out the criminals who use their platforms for malevolent reasons.
The way the stolen money can disappear needs to be addressed, too. Criminal gangs exploit the innocence of the young and the desperate whom they employ as money mules, hijacking bank accounts to transfer money across the world.
Consumers in their teens and 20s need to be reminded on the platforms they inhabit – and regrettably this is not that platform – that giving a stranger access to your bank account risks a criminal conviction, and facilitates the exploitation of vulnerable people. It allows criminal networks to engage in crimes like people trafficking, the sexual exploitation of women and murder.
[ AI is being used by scammers but it has the power to help fight fraudOpens in new window ]
And An Garda Síochána needs to be better resourced and empowered to take down the gangs behind the crimes.
The bottom line is that through a mix of education, understanding, empowerment and action we can bring the scourge of the scam under control. In the absence of that collective action, there will be more heartbreaking stories, more lives shattered. It is happening now – there is no time to waste.