Editorial
This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.
Last week, Santander
released deepfake images of their head of fraud risk management Chris Ainsley and ‘finfluencer’ Mr Money Jar, Timi Merriman-Johnson, to raise awareness of scam potential of this technology.
Deepfake scams are a growing threat for financial services, although they are not necessarily a threat which many banks are deeply concerned about at this time.
For me this educational stunt raised questions of what role banks have, individually, in ensuring they are informing their readers about fraud well enough. I spoke with Ainsley about what role they feel they have in educating people of scam risks.
Customers being aware of the risks
Alongside creating the deepfakes, Santander released the findings from a survey which saw an alarming 52% of British people not having heard of a deepfake, or misunderstanding what one is. Of the 2,000 people surveyed this July, only 17% were confident they
could identify a deepfake.
Deepfakes are getting really good. When speaking to the Santander team I was told that they had to make the deepfake of Ainsley a little bit worse looking because
it was too convincing.
Of those who surveyed who did know what a deepfake was, 54% were worried about them being used in fraud and 51% were fearful a family member could fall victim to a scam because of them.
This does show that when customers are informed about what technology is out there, they seem more likely to be aware of the risks.
Ainsley commented: “The first thing that comes to mind is, well, if you’re digitally cloning someone, what potentially is going to be used for and the first thing people are already thinking about is something nefarious.”
He added: “Those who have heard of them, their generally feeling is that it could be used for something bad rather than anything good.”
What banks can do
Banks already have some efforts to try and help customers avoid becoming scammed. I can tell from speaking to different banks that they are trying very hard to prevent their clients from falling victim to fraud or scams.
However, Ainsley raised the point “We [the banks] have almost the most intelligence about how this is going to effect people in their pocket. So, if you think of all the things that we’re pushing out there in terms of fraud education, customer education,
consumer awareness, we’ve got the most information … as to what is happening right now and what criminals are doing.”
This is only behind the scenes though, Santander’s step to publicise the growing risk of deepfakes is an interesting action to raise awareness. Banks need to reach out more directly with customers, making them aware of the ways they can potentially be tricked.
The way fraud works is changing, Ainsley noted: “It’s no longer just the messaging of obviously don’t keep your card and pin together, which is a solid piece of advice but it’s kind of something that most people will accept. You have other things that are
happening – cold calls, ‘hi mom’ text messages, potentially types of deep fakes, investment frauds – they’re much more complicated, they’re much harder for someone to understand if they haven’t got any context of what’s really going on. So it’s our role and
our responsibility to make sure that people are aware of this because we have that information and we should be sharing.”
Fraud prevention of the future
I was recently having lunch with my dad, he mentioned that he’d received some obviously scam texts and he had ignored them. I explained to him that there were new abilities for scammers to clone my voice, call him up and have it sound like me asking for
money. He wasn’t so sure he’d be able to tell the difference.
I felt a bit bad scaring my dad with that, and he promised that should any of his children phone him up and ask for money from now on he will hang up – not my intention.
The point is that he didn’t even know that was a possibility. More banks need to be educating their customers. There are warnings when making payments and boxes which pop-up, but there is scope for more to be done.
This also includes removing the stigma associated with falling victim to a scam. People are not as likely to come forward because they feel ashamed and embarrassed. They are not likely to come forward if they don’t understand that what has happened to them
was a scam.
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