Editorial: ​Fraudsters are getting clever, but so are banks at combatting them

​We report on page 16 about 5,000+ reports to police about suspect fraud in a year.

​Victims of such fraud in Northern Ireland reported losing a total of £19m to scammers, according to figures from a state agency called Action Fraud. A victim of an online "romance scam" transferred £50,000 to a fraudster.

It is a triumph of the modern era that the elderly can do more and more of their daily business and duties online. but older folk are often less computer literate and can be particularly susceptible to being ripped off. Even hardened users of the internet and digital technology can be confounded by trickery. It is sometimes very hard to tell if an email or message that replicates, for example, a bank’s logo is legitimate.

Not long ago looking at the email address was a clue – an address that includes the name of the business that the sender was purporting to represent but then, after the @, ends in goobledygook suggested something awry. Fraudsters are now more clever than that.

Experienced digital users can also at speed be tricked by a cleverly worded email to click on a link or open an attachment that increases the risk of fraudsters gaining access to your information. The good news is that businesses are getting better at making websites easy to navigate, and at giving customers access codes or biometric signatures that are hard to crack.

The banks give good advice: they rarely ask you to click on links and never ask for your PIN number or online passwords or such secret details. And if they are legitimate they will happily give you a contact number that you can check against your own records, to phone them back.

Also, it is human nature to feel a brief surge of hope if we are contacted randomly about a prize cash winning or a named in a forgotten will. It sounds too good to be true, and usually is.