In a bid to raise awareness over the threat of digital fraud, Santander's unique Phish & Chips van is touring the UK to help advise people on how to avoid scammers and the various techniques they use to target the vulnerable.
The food truck will be giving out fish and chips to people who can then pay using "phishing emails and smishing texts".
The Phish & Chips van will be visiting Glasgow on Saturday 28th of October between 12pm-2pm and will be parked on Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
Customers at the new Phish & Chips van can simply present staff with a phishing email or smishing text, in exchange for a portion of fish and chips, along with a side of advice on avoiding the tricks criminals use in their attempts to steal people’s money and identities.
Customers without a phishing email or text to show can alternatively take a short quiz to identify a scam email or text.
Research by the banking company has revealed that 74 per cent of Britons have been targeted by scammers with phishing emails, smishing texts and vishing calls and that an estimated 600 million scam attempts were made in the UK over email, text and telephone in the last 12 months.
With each person targeted receiving an average of 16 fraudulent emails, texts or calls last year, this means up to 600 million phishing, smishing and vishing attempts potentially took place in the UK in the last 12 months.
While ‘phishing’ as a term may have entered the mainstream lexicon, Santander’s research shows that one in seven people don’t know the terms phishing, smishing or vishing at all, while almost three quarters of people are not fully familiar with their meaning.
Reza Attar-Zadeh, Head of Customer Experience at Santander UK, commented: “Santander takes the fight against fraud very seriously – we have seen the life changing impact it can have on people’s lives. Consumer awareness is absolutely key to tackling what is currently one of the biggest threats to the security of people’s finances.
"Our Phish & Chips van is a way of delivering our three key fraud prevention messages in an engaging way while educating people that both banks and consumers have a role to play in keeping the fraudsters at bay.”
In addition to dishing out fish and chips, Santander UK is serving up its top tips and advice on avoiding becoming a victim of phishing scams:
- Never share your PIN number or online banking password with another person, not even Santander staff.
- Never download software or let anyone log on to your computer devices remotely during or after a cold call.
- Never enter your online banking details after clicking on a link in an email or text message.
Although the latest fraud figures from Financial Fraud Action UK5 show an overall reduction of eight per cent in total fraud losses, there has been a seven per cent rise in the number of cases of remote banking fraud with a five per cent rise in internet banking, a seven per cent rise in telephone banking and a twenty per cent rise in mobile banking in the first half of 2017.
Reza Attar-Zadeh added: “Phishing has been around for a number of years, originating with emails that were unsophisticated and obviously fraudulent. However, today phishing emails have evolved.
"They can appear in inboxes as convincing and genuine communications from consumer brands, but there are signs to look out for such as spelling mistakes, generic greetings rather than your name and suspicious looking email addresses.”
