More than a third of adverts on Facebook Marketplace are scams and consumers should avoid purchases on the online shop, TSB has claimed.
The bank said that Facebook Marketplace accounted for 73 per cent of all purchase fraud cases at TSB and was the biggest driver of fraud by volume.
It also calculated that £60 million could have been lost by customers of all banks via Facebook Marketplace last year, equating to £160,000 being lost every day on the platform.
• Seven Facebook Marketplace scams to watch out for
Matt Hepburn, fraud spokesman at TSB, said: “You wouldn’t shop at a supermarket if a third of the items were stale or counterfeit, so the same should apply to Facebook Marketplace, where you could have a one-in-three chance of being scammed when paying online.
“Social media companies really must act on their commitments under the government’s Online Fraud Charter by urgently clearing up their platforms. Removing scam adverts is a good first test.”
Last November, a fraud team at TSB sampled 100 Facebook Marketplace posts on their feeds, including adverts for cars, watches, games consoles, air fryers and handbags. After engaging with the sellers to determine whether the items were genuinely for sale, the experts concluded that 34 per cent of the listings were fraudulent.
Sellers used tactics such as directing the buyer to fake websites, refusing to allow viewings of an item in person or demanding fees in advance.
In one post a seller advertised a 2016 Audi Q3 for £6,000, but refused to answer questions and instead directed the fraud experts to an email address that previously had been reported as part of a car-fraud scam.
Another advert listed an iPhone 13 as “brand new” at only £84, even though on the Apple website the model sold for £599. Upon contacting the seller, the fraud expert was directed to a scam website to make the payment.
Other items included a Ninja Air Fryer, listed as brand new at £65 on Facebook Marketplace despite the real retail price being £249, for which TSB was directed to a fake website.
Overall, vehicles or vehicle parts were the most common listings for scams, making up 21 per cent of all items by volume. They were followed by phones, shoes and clothing, as well as games consoles and accessories, making up 7 per cent each of the total.
Other items for which a high volume of scams were identified included concert and festival tickets, small electronics such as laptops, cameras, tablets and drones, furniture, household electronics and appliances and building materials and tools.
Facebook is one of very few online shops that does not require sellers to verify their identity or location and police chiefs previously have warned that the platform facilitates organised crime gangs behind the surge in shoplifting to sell stolen goods.
Last November Meta, which owns Facebook, agreed to sign up to a new online fraud charter in Britain to stop an epidemic of scams that has resulted in an estimated 140,0000 people losing money on its platform every year. The industry-wide voluntary agreement will commit technology companies to a new standard of verification and vetting of people using their platforms to sell goods and services.
Meta, Google and other technology companies already have introduced measures that ensure that advertisers of financial promotions are checked with the Financial Conduct Authority.
A Meta spokesman said: “With tens of millions of people using our apps daily in the UK, we recognise our important role in tackling the industry-wide issue of online purchase scams and have systems in place to block scams.
“Facebook Marketplace is a local meet-up and collection service so we don’t facilitate payments or shipping, but scammers exploit this by taking conversations off our platforms where we can’t enforce. We encourage our community to report scams immediately so we can take action and we’ll continue equipping customers with knowledge to transact securely and avoid fraud on Marketplace.”
⬤ JP Morgan is fending off 45 billion cyberhacking attempts every day, double the number of last year, according to the head of its asset and wealth management division. Mary Callahan Erdoes told a panel at Davos: “The fraudsters get smarter, savvier, quicker, more devious, more mischievous. It’s hard and it’s going to become harder. Staying one step ahead is really the job of each and everyone of us.”
Erdoes said that the Wall Street bank employed 62,000 engineers, “more than Google or Amazon”, and spent about $15 billion on technology every year. JP Morgan was the victim of one of the biggest cyberattacks on a bank on record in 2014, in which the names, addresses, phone numbers and emails of more than 80 million households were compromised.