Meta said it will expand a program with British banks to catch scammers. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo
Meta on Tuesday said it would expand its information-sharing program with British banks that allows it to eliminate scammers and protect customers.
The Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange, or FIRE, allows banks to share fraud intelligence directly with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, about frauds and scams it learns about. Meta said that NatWest and Metro Banks were the first British banks to participate in the pilot program. Advertisement
Meta said the data provided by the pilot program has already allowed it to remove about 20,000 accounts they identified.
“This work has already seen us take action against thousands of accounts run by scammers, indicating the importance of banks and platforms working together to tackle this societal issue,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta’s global head of counter-fraud, said in a statement.
“We will only beat these criminals if we work together and share relevant information related to scams. Financial institutions can share unique information with us which we can in turn use to train our systems to take action against more scams globally.”
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said cybercriminals have become sophisticated enough to create fake bank websites to fool or entice people to transfer their money or disclose enough personal information to access the customer’s actual account. Advertisement
Scammers have also developed bogus banking apps that can install malicious software that can still the user’s personal information and banking information to their real accounts.
British authorities said they have already found success with the Meta pilot program, taking down a large concert ticket scam network that had targeted people in Britain and the United States.
“Spotting and stopping fraudsters before they are able to target customers is the best way to address this growing problem,” David Lindberg, CEO of retail banking for NatWest, said in a Meta statement.
