Stop Scams steps up to online fraud challenge

Core engine at Stop Scams

Stop Scams has a data-sharing platform that was developed in-house, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) acting as the host. The JavaScript-based platform has capabilities around receiving and sending data. 

“We’re trying to build an operational capability to be able to receive lots of data and send lots of data at pace and at scale, in real time if needs be,” Coombs said. “It’s now quite straightforward for us to dispatch millions of records to multiple organisations in one go.” He added that, given the sensitive data, the system “naturally keeps a record of everything that’s gone and where it’s gone”.

The platform enables the organisations – which are often abused by fraudsters at different points of a scam – to share data and spot suspicious behaviour.

Coombs described how fraudsters leave digital footprints which can be used to help fight against their crimes: “If you behave fraudulently in a banking context, you’ll be leaving a data trail. You set the account up with a phone number and an email address, and you will have an IP address because you’re connecting. You will also have device IDs. There’s a long trail of data that you leave behind.”

Block SIMs service

Stop Scams has now reached an important milestone and can now, for the first time, talk about one of its tech-led projects. It has around 15 of these projects on the go, at different stages, with roughly six live, but just one has reached a stage where it could be made public so far.

“We have a whole suite of programmes that are at various stages of development,” said Coombs. “We are receiving and sending data to all of the sectors that are members of Stop Scams. But until they reach the much later stage, we can’t really talk about them externally as we need to go through quite a significant process with our participating members before we can start sharing.”

But details of a service, known as Block SIMs, are now able to be shared. The service, which goes beyond the UK, involves identifying the misuse of SIM cards to commit fraudulent activity.

Telcos produce millions of SIM cards and scammers are using them to initiate their activities after realising that know your customer (KYC) checks only require a UK phone. If they steal those SIM cards, they don’t have to put credit on them and can receive a one-time passcode to help them to set up various accounts.

“They’re stealing these things and using them to build the infrastructure they need to scam people,” said Coombes.

The telcos can see the behaviour and the traffic, and they recognise what’s going on. When they shut the account down, the phone number and SIM cards stop working, but by then the scammers have already set up an account. If the telco tells the banks, they can then shut them down.

“The telco gives the data to us and then we distribute it. We’re trisector, so we have banks, telcos and tech firms,” said Coombs. “Any of those could have seen that those SIM cards were used to set up accounts, so we distribute those numbers to our members and ask them to investigate. They do, and they find accounts that they can then shut down themselves.

“We believe there to be somewhere in the region of more than four million of these SIMs at the moment in the UK, and we’ve sent out around two-and-a-half million warnings.”

Moving beyond the three sectors

Stop Scams is currently focused on the three sectors as they’re being used by scammers the most, but there might be opportunities to move into other areas.

“We realise we need to cross sectors to be able to do it, and those are the three big sectors that have their platforms and services abused by scammers, but we do talk to other sectors. It’s not inconceivable that we would expand and allow either allow others to join or maybe interact with them in other ways that further the cause,” said Coombs.

It would not appear to be plain sailing for the current cohort as banks have aired their frustration at having to pay customers who fall prey to scams, with those scams often found on social media.

There have been debates over who should pay for the damage done by scammers. But Coombs said organisations across all groups are working to solve the problems, with Stop Scams an important platform for this: “There’s a lot of opinions here and there that we read about in the press, but what we experience is our members are really engaged and have teams working hard to try to solve these problems.”

Much of the work to solve problems is being done by the tech teams at all organisations. The Stop Scams tech team itself is small, made up of some in-house and external experts, with around 16 people in total.

“It’s essentially scrum teams. We’ve got product managers, software engineers, data operations people, QA testers and data analytics experts,” added Coombs.

But the team also works closely with the tech experts at its members, with some of these firms having large and highly skilled teams working with the latest technologies.

“They have very impressive teams,” said Coombs. “And it’s not just in technology, but across fraud and investigations, data and analytics. There’s a bunch of impressive people out there and we’re lucky enough to be able to work with them.”

The company also works closely with the National Crime Agency and the Online Crime Centre.