The government has been under fire from Labour for a five-month delay in releasing a new fraud strategy and has promised a crackdown on international con artists who contact UK phone numbers to defraud people out of their money, Entrepreneurng report.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, claimed Suella Braverman, the home secretary, had stated the plan would be released “shortly” exactly five months prior. According to Thornberry, throughout that time 1.5 million offenses would have been committed in England and Wales.
The statement comes as Labour tries to move past a severe controversy over a Labour advertisement that implied Prime Minister Rishi Sunak didn’t think offenders convicted of sexually abusing children should spend time in prison.
After a push on law and order campaigning last week, the advertisement, which has sparked internal rifts, was part of a series on the Tory record on crime. This week, Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of Labour, and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, will shift the focus of the election to the economy and cost of living.
Thornberry wants to connect the effort against fraud by the government with issues of crime and living expenses.
Number spoofing is when con artists change their caller id to hide their identity from the person they are ringing, frequently making it look as if they are calling from the UK.
Labour said it anticipated pushback from industries that relied on overseas call centers, particularly India, which harmed the country’s reputation for free speech. Labour also proposed blocking mobile calls from abroad using UK numbers unless the network provider confirmed the user was roaming.
Labour said that the move would not influence the parameters being discussed for the UK-India trade agreement over digital and data services.
Government statistics on the percentage of fraud offenses committed by scammers headquartered abroad are unavailable, but recent investigations, such as those conducted for the BBC series Scam Interceptors, reveal that professionalized operations exist in areas of Asia.
Ofcom analysis According to an Ofcom study from August 2022, 61% of respondents stated they were very reluctant to answer a foreign phone number they did not recognize, and 40% answered the same thing when the number was hidden.
Conclusion
However, if the incoming call came from an unknown UK landline or mobile number, the percentage dropped to 25%. Network providers must identify and prohibit calls from numbers that do not uniquely identify the caller as of May 15 due to new regulations. However, there is no specific defense against con artists keeping up their current practice of purchasing reputable UK numbers.
Genuine UK mobile numbers can be purchased by scammers for use in spoofing, and they can use an overseas-based robo-dialer to place as many calls as they want to the UK.
Source: The GuardianÂ
