If you are covering the Treasury Committee session with Google and Facebook, please see the following comment from Debbie Barton, financial crime prevention expert at Quilter:
“With so many politicians and organisations saying exactly the same thing – that the Online Safety Bill must include paid for advertising and cloned websites – the onus was really on the tech companies to explain exactly why this change is unnecessary. But what was abundantly clear from the evidence presented to the Treasury Committee today is that the tech companies didn’t really have an answer to why advert scams and cloned website scams shouldn’t be included in the Bill alongside user-generated content.
“On the day that UK Finance reported a 30% increase in fraud in the UK, consumers across the UK would have been looking for assurances from the tech companies that they are serious about eradicating the threat of online fraud – and working together with other tech companies to share intelligence on known scammers. But it’s clear that no such coordination is taking place.
“Awareness raising through advertising credits and media campaigns is certainly a positive, and should absolutely be a tool in the regulator’s arsenal for clamping down on online fraud. But this doesn’t tackle the root cause of the harm, which is the fact that fraudsters are able to sell their fraudulent wares in the wild west of digital advertising, with virtually no regulatory measures in place to protect consumers or sanctions on those tech firms that allow bad apples to slip through the net.”