MEA reveals consumers blame banks, retailers and mobile operators for a rise in scams

Callsign, the digital trust pioneer, reveals that consumers think banks, retailers and mobile operators need to do more to protect them and their personal information from fraudsters. Trust in these organizations is eroding fast because consumers say they are drowning in scam messages from fraudsters spoofing brand names daily.

The report was based on fieldwork carried out online in June 2021 by Opinium across the EMEA and included a sample of 1065 consumers across UAE, KSA, Qatar, Bahrain, South Africa.

The survey of MEA consumers revealed that almost a quarter of consumers (24 percent) say their trust in businesses such as banks, retailers, mobile network operators and delivery companies, has decreased due to persistent scams spoofing brand names. With regional consumers (59 percent) asking mobile network operators to do more to stop scammers using their platforms, and half of customers (50 percent) asking the same of banks.

“Our data demonstrates that consumer trust in our digital world has vanished and, rightly or wrongly, brands are being blamed. Yet the sense is that little is being actually done to purposely re-establish digital trust through complete and accurate digital identities,” explained Stuart Dobbie, SVP for Innovation, at Callsign.

The problem has become so pervasive that consumers don’t trust the technology, processes designed to protect them from fraudsters, and confirm identities with many adamant that users must prove beyond doubt who they are when logging in to use a platform, and that there should be an online identity system to quell the surge of scams.

People claim to have received scams through email (64 percent), SMS (67 percent), phone (44 percent), messaging apps (45 percent) and social media (36 percent) in the last year. But over a third (38 percent) of global consumers don’t know where or who to report a scam message to, or simply get too many to bother (37 percent). Nearly half of MEA consumers don’t trust organizations to keep their data safe; 49 percent of scam victims react with suspicion wanting to know where fraudsters got their details.

Therefore, it's no surprise that consumers are calling on businesses to do more to keep them safe and when it comes to stopping fraud and scammers, consumers know what action they want organizations to take. Nearly half of MEA customers (48 percent) think users should have to prove who they are when logging into a platform.

The solution lies in re-thinking how we fight fraud and how we identify people online. The most proven way to do this is by layering behavioural biometrics over threat detection, device and location data. Through a simple swipe of a phone, typing pressure, mouse movements or device angles, users can be personally recognized to a 99.999 percent accuracy. Organizations eliminate one point of failure in the authentication process and achieve two-factor authentication with minimal friction.