UK bank issues stark £570 warning to anyone shopping for clothes and games

dailyrecord.co.uk:

All social media users have been issued a stark warning from Lloyds Bank over the £570 lost per person to shopping scams.The institution, which is a sister bank to Bank of Scotland and Halifax, says Facebook and Instagram purchase scams are expected to cost Brits more than £270 million this year.Lloyds says social media has become the "Wild Wild west" due to the combination of a rising popularity of online shopping and a surge in fraudsters leading to people paying for goods that do not exist.Victims can often be lured in by the promise of cut-price or hard-to-find items, the banking giant said.People are asked to send money directly from their account to another account via bank transfer, which provides very little consumer protection when something goes wrong, reports the Liverpool Echo.New research by Lloyds Banking Group found that more than two thirds (68%) of all purchase scams now start on Facebook, including Facebook Marketplace, and Instagram.

Lloyds Bank found that clothes, trainers, gaming consoles and mobile phones are among the most common goods being falsely advertised.

The average amount lost by the victims of purchase scams is around £570 across the industry.The latest figures show someone in the UK falls victim to a shopping scam across these two platforms every seven minutes.Liz Ziegler, Lloyds' fraud prevention director, told the Echo: "Social media has become the Wild West of online shopping in recent years, with very few checks in place to verify who is selling what.

This has left consumers increasingly exposed to ruthless fraudsters, with hundreds of new victims targeted every day and tens of millions of pounds flowing to organised crime gangs each year."Banks have been at the forefront of tackling