City of London police data, reported by The Guardian, shows account-takeover fraud losses surged from £1.2 million to £6.3 million year-on-year. The scam is straightforward: criminals seize an account, impersonate the owner, and pitch fake concert tickets or goods to the victim's friends and family. Trust the name on screen, lose the money.
This reads as a consumer fraud story. It's actually a market failure. Social platforms monetize trust, yet they don't bear the full cost when identity becomes cheap to steal. That bill lands on victims, banks, police, and anyone trying to sell something legitimate online. When the cost of weak security is externalized, there's no incentive to fix it.
The percentage isn't the story. Per-victim amounts are. Most hijacked-account scams are small. £50, £100, maybe £200. That's invisible to platforms but adds up fast across millions of users. Companies that profit from frictionless sharing don't fully absorb the cost of weak account security, weak identity verification, and scam cleanup. Until they do, "buyer beware" is just a subsidy from users to platforms, this year measured at £6.3 million.
Filed to the Markets desk · 2 days ago