Digital frauds

✒ THE recent news has carried two big stories about frauds: there have been fake product reviews on Facebook, boosting sales, and there has been a rush of “Mum and Dad” fake text scams which ask for money to be sent on.

Both of these frauds happen via digital technology. And real people were distant. In the case of the fake product reviews, we read the stuff online and think it’s a real voice and a real recommendation, but it’s boosterism ( on “Fakebook”?).

With the fake text scam, again the real person is absent.

Both are tricks trying to use digital technology to fool people. Could these scams have happened in earlier, pre-digital analogue times?

Well, maybe not like this. Fake reviews would get checked and fewer people would see them. They could not “go viral”. And we didn’t have the same social media influencers around, did we?

As for the mobile phone fraud scams, well, mobile phones came in and this route did not exist. Fraudsters would have had to have phoned up or sent a fake letter or a postcard.

The digital technologies enable the fraud and we should all be alert for this. Maybe our “fraud awareness” has not caught up with our technological innovation.

Fraudsters cruelly innovate too. As a general rule, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. And always check on the status of the review, and speak to your loved ones in person if anyone suddenly asks you for money. Their phone could have been cloned or stolen.

It is best to be always on guard for fraud, it crops up all over the place now.

John Wood Bristol