The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned investors to watch out for screen sharing scams after one victim lost £48,000.
The latest part of the regulator’s ScamSmart campaign focuses on scams where fraudsters use screen sharing software to take over victims’ computers.
In one case, a 59-year-old woman was persuaded to download remote desktop software to secure an investment. She lost more than £48,000 when scammers accessed her banking details, her pension, and applied for loans on her behalf.
Angela Underhill clicked on a Bitcoin advert and received a call from someone claiming to be a financial adviser. Offering to complete the first investment for her, they asked her to download the ‘AnyDesk’ platform, which then gave the scammers open access to all the financial details on her computer.
Her case is one of 2,142 the FCA has seen since July 2020 relating to screen sharing, with more than £25m lost between 1 January 2021 and 31 March 2022, and victims ranging from 18 to over 70.
The FCA said there had been an increase of 86% in screen sharing scam cases in one year, with 2,014 cases in 12 months alone.
Spotting the warning signs
Its latest ScamSmart campaign aims to raise awareness of these tactics and help investors spot the warning signs.
Using platforms including Teams, TeamViewer and Zoom, screen sharing scams not only involve people sharing their financial data, but scammers have also been able to embed themselves in victims’…
