Money Saving Experts Martin Lewis Founder of the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute and Rocio Concha Director of Policy and Advocacy for Which?, have signed an open letter (10th November) asking for paid-for scam adverts to be added to the Online Safety Bill. This follows on from the letter sent in May sent in coalition with 14 organisations calling on the Government to use the upcoming Bill to help protect people from an avalanche of online scams. But why is this so important?
Scam adverts come in all shapes and sizes and people can easily fall victim to them as they tend to focus on our inner need to have good health and wealth. However, the cost of falling for these scams is a real issue not only for our pockets, but for our mental health too.
Adverts selling fake cures and once in a life-time opportunities can seem like they are too good to be true – and often are – but the problem raised by the organisations backing this cause is that these adverts are unregulated so it’s easy for scammers to take your money and your personal information, fraudulently and without consequences.
Scams covered by the Bill include user-generated scams, scams that appear in ‘organic’ search results – which are the results you see below any ads on using an online search engine – and most user-generated and brand-generated social media posts but paid-for adverts are not included.
Adding paid-for adverts to the Online Safety Bill will give more power to regulators to stop scammers from using social media and search engines to target vulnerable people.
As an ethical financial provider Wave Community Bank is backing this campaign so that online scams can be stopped.
If you have ever fallen for online scams then it’s important that you talk to someone. You can visit the Money Helper section on our website to see what help is available near you.
