UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has vowed to crack down on text scammers as the government lays out its new plan for tackling fraud.
Key to the plans is outlawing ‘Sim Farms’, which enable scammers to scale up operations and send out thousands of messages at any one given time.
Furthermore, the government detailed that it will look to eradicate cold calls on all financial products – meaning that anyone who receives calls trying to pitch crypto schemes or insurance will know it’s a scam.
Sunak stated on the plans: “Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime. It costs us nearly £7 billion a year and we know these proceeds are funding organised crime and terror. What’s more, new technologies are making these scams easier to do and harder to police.
“It’s time to take the fight to the scammers and fraudsters, and put an end to these crimes which can devastate lives and livelihoods within seconds.”
Nonetheless, the plans have been met with backlash as falling short of what is needed, with Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, claiming they are simply rebadging of existing terms.
She commented: “This plan is too little, too late and fails to match the scale of the problem.
“All the home secretary has delivered is a rebadging of existing national teams, and a re-announcement on the replacement of Action Fraud from almost two years ago.”
