Open letter to
the Prime Minister calling for paid-for scam advertising to urgently be
included in the upcoming Online Safety Bill
Tuesday 16 November 2021
Dear Prime Minister,
The UK is facing an epidemic of scam adverts. Every day,
criminals are scamming innocent people out of life-changing amounts of money or
risking their health by selling them fake health cures. Consumers are being
targeted on a scale we have never seen before.
One of the most common online scammers’ tricks is misusing the
names and faces of well-known, trusted public figures – our names and faces –
to give them a false legitimacy. All the signatories of this letter have been
used in scammers’ adverts online, some thousands of times. We are writing to
ask you to urgently include regulation of paid-for scam adverts within the
Online Safety Bill.
Many of us have had victims get in touch and have heard their tears
after losing their life savings – sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds –
because they trusted what they thought was us. This cannot continue. It
devastates lives.
We can’t protect the public from these criminals, but you can.
Near inaction by big technology firms means things are getting worse, not
better – so we are pleading with you to step up and help in this fight to
protect people.
Our current advertising rules were set up to police the likes of
soap manufacturers making false claims about how white they can clean sheets –
not to tackle sophisticated, psychologically adept, digital organised crime,
based around the world. This leaves many scammers untraced, uninvestigated, and
unpunished.
There are little powers out there to prevent online scam adverts
or get recourse for victims. Regulators have few meaningful tools to punish
platforms that get paid to publish them. It is therefore distressing that while
your Government has, thankfully, chosen to include user-generated scams in the
Online Safety Bill, it has excluded paid-for scam adverts.
The distinction between user-generated content and adverts is
blurred in our digital age. This would result in the law covering someone
making a scam post, but not if they pay to promote the same content. It seems a
strange system.
Your Government has said it wants to eventually tackle scam
adverts through changing advertising regulation – but this will have to go
through a lengthy process of legislating in the face of fierce opposition from
a powerful advertising industry.
Meanwhile, huge swathes of people will continue to see their
financial, physical and mental health destroyed after falling victim to one of
these scams. Instead, it could be tackled quite simply by being treated just
like user-generated online scams in the Online Safety Bill that’s already going
through Parliament.
Scammers’ ability to reach the public must be cut off. If you
are serious about the concrete commitment you’ve made to deal with online
fraud, please, let’s speedily start protecting the victims of scam adverts from
the wolves – saving livelihoods and possibly also lives.
Yours faithfully,
Martin Lewis OBE, Duncan Bannatyne OBE, Sir Richard Branson,
Deborah Meaden, Rob Brydon MBE, Dawn French, Bear Grylls OBE, Peter Jones CBE,
Lorraine Kelly CBE, Davina McCall, Phillip Schofield, Bradley Walsh, Robbie
Williams, Holly Willoughby
As Richard Branson is included in the petitioners, it's difficult to take it too seriously. Virgin Rail for a start ?? Perhaps "scam" needs redefining somewhat
Hi Philppa, as I ubderstand it, scammers use the names and photographs of the people who have signed this open letter in order to persuade people to invest in non-existent companies, buy non-existent medicines or any sort of non-existent goods, services, investments.
Many have trusted these adverts and many have lost their life savings, because they trusted the persons who are supposedly the promoters.
I'm afraid I don't know how Virgin Rail is related to that.
I received the following yesterday and forwarded it to BT. The email address that it came from wasn't a BT one and didn't have any BT logos on it just a wide blue line top and bottom. Needless to say, I can still access my email account.
Dear BT User
We emailed you last month to let you know about changes we are making to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These changes are key steps towards creating what's next for our consumers, like
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You can learn more about what these policies mean for you here, as well as more about the changes in our FAQs.
In order to continue to access your (BTINTERNET) Mail account after November 17th-2021,
you will need to confirm you accept the Terms of Service. We also need a few moments of your time to explain how we manage your data and provide you with some choices in relation to the processing of that data.
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Was it Martin Lewis or one of the money experts on tv, someone put his photo to a saving scheme as if he had recommended it, people went by his recommendation lost lots of money. He came on Tv and said it wasn’t him and to take no notice, too late by then.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Posts
I have a dream that my.. children.. one day.. will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character
Martin Luther KingOpen letter to the Prime Minister calling for paid-for scam advertising to urgently be included in the upcoming Online Safety Bill
Tuesday 16 November 2021
Dear Prime Minister,
The UK is facing an epidemic of scam adverts. Every day, criminals are scamming innocent people out of life-changing amounts of money or risking their health by selling them fake health cures. Consumers are being targeted on a scale we have never seen before.
One of the most common online scammers’ tricks is misusing the names and faces of well-known, trusted public figures – our names and faces – to give them a false legitimacy. All the signatories of this letter have been used in scammers’ adverts online, some thousands of times. We are writing to ask you to urgently include regulation of paid-for scam adverts within the Online Safety Bill.
Many of us have had victims get in touch and have heard their tears after losing their life savings – sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds – because they trusted what they thought was us. This cannot continue. It devastates lives.
We can’t protect the public from these criminals, but you can. Near inaction by big technology firms means things are getting worse, not better – so we are pleading with you to step up and help in this fight to protect people.
Our current advertising rules were set up to police the likes of soap manufacturers making false claims about how white they can clean sheets – not to tackle sophisticated, psychologically adept, digital organised crime, based around the world. This leaves many scammers untraced, uninvestigated, and unpunished.
There are little powers out there to prevent online scam adverts or get recourse for victims. Regulators have few meaningful tools to punish platforms that get paid to publish them. It is therefore distressing that while your Government has, thankfully, chosen to include user-generated scams in the Online Safety Bill, it has excluded paid-for scam adverts.
The distinction between user-generated content and adverts is blurred in our digital age. This would result in the law covering someone making a scam post, but not if they pay to promote the same content. It seems a strange system.
Your Government has said it wants to eventually tackle scam adverts through changing advertising regulation – but this will have to go through a lengthy process of legislating in the face of fierce opposition from a powerful advertising industry.
Meanwhile, huge swathes of people will continue to see their financial, physical and mental health destroyed after falling victim to one of these scams. Instead, it could be tackled quite simply by being treated just like user-generated online scams in the Online Safety Bill that’s already going through Parliament.
Scammers’ ability to reach the public must be cut off. If you are serious about the concrete commitment you’ve made to deal with online fraud, please, let’s speedily start protecting the victims of scam adverts from the wolves – saving livelihoods and possibly also lives.
Yours faithfully,
Martin Lewis OBE, Duncan Bannatyne OBE, Sir Richard Branson, Deborah Meaden, Rob Brydon MBE, Dawn French, Bear Grylls OBE, Peter Jones CBE, Lorraine Kelly CBE, Davina McCall, Phillip Schofield, Bradley Walsh, Robbie Williams, Holly Willoughby
Perhaps "scam" needs redefining somewhat
You can learn more about what these policies mean for you here, as well as more about the changes in our FAQs.
In order to continue to access your (BTINTERNET) Mail account after November 17th-2021, you will need to confirm you accept the Terms of Service. We also need a few moments of your time to explain how we manage your data and provide you with some choices in relation to the processing of that data.
If you do not want the new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to apply to you, you will no longer be able to access your account from November 17th-2021. If you would like the contents of your email account, you may obtain a copy of your data by clicking here.
Thank you for your time and cooperation.
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