Scams Awareness Month
- Category: News
- Created on 2011-04-01
- Written by Daniel Dainty
February was "Scams Awareness Month" when the government's National Fraud Authority re-launched its "Action Fraud" 24-hour online reporting service, aimed at reducing letter post and telephone scams said to be cheating Britons out of millions of pounds per year.
In March, Action Fraud set up an additional reporting service to tackle scam e-mail messages, establishing a dedicated e-mail address - JLIB_HTML_CLOAKING - where scam messages can simply be forwarded. The plan is for all e-mails sent to Action Fraud to be shared with the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, run by the City of London Police, for collation and analysis.
"This will enable crucial intelligence to be gathered and preventative action to be taken, seeking to disrupt the fraudsters and close down the links between them", according to Dr Bernard Herdan, CEO of the National Fraud Authority, who runs Action Fraud. He added: "This is the first time we have been able to collect and analyse scam mail and e-mails in this way. Collecting intelligence is the key to us being able to disrupt the activities of fraudsters and target their networks for closure".
One bank - HSBC - has been running its own scam reporting service since last year, asking targeted e-mail recipients to forward any suspect messages involving the bank to JLIB_HTML_CLOAKING .
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