Tech giants told to repay Brits who fall prey to scams on their platforms

Tech giants need to step up and reimburse Brits scammed by fraudsters running wild on their sites, the Government has been told.

MPs say current laws aren't robust enough and "make it easy" for criminals to fleece people out of their money on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google.

The Treasury Committee's report comes amid a spike in online fraud, which is surging at an "alarming rate", they say.

They think by forcing tech firms to reimburse victims conned on their sites, the firms will finally take it seriously, the Sun Online reports.

Financial crime watchdog, Action Fraud, reported a massive 36 per cent rise in fraud crime last year with 420,000 offences recorded.

Between 2019 and 2020 there were 460,000 offences reported to Action Fraud (AFP via Getty Images)

Con-artists pounced on Covid fears, offering bogus testing kits, jabs, among other snide pandemic-related goods.

Angela McLaren, City of London Police Assistant Commissioner for Economic and Cybercrime told MPs that Brits lost £120million to scams on social media alone between 2019 and 2020.

She said: "If we look at the types of fraud that are most emergent at the moment, the vast majority of them will rely on some form of social media platform.

"That applies whether it’s romance fraud, investment fraud or online shopping.

"The consistent theme through all these frauds is, obviously, the use of social networking and social media sites."

The sites were also slammed for taking hundreds of thousands in fees from Financial Conduct Authority adverts - which are circulated to warn people of fraud.

Though they offered the FCA some free postings, the regulator was stung with a £690,000 bill from Google, £364,000 from Facebook's Meta, and £161,000 from Twitter.

The sites have also been slammed for charging the FCA for adverts (Getty Images)

The FCA's Director of Enforcement, Mark Steward, said: "We would prefer that these ads were not published in the first place, to be really frank.

"The irony of us having to pay social media to publish warnings about advertising that they are receiving money from is not lost on us."

Google has responded by offering £2.2million in free credits. They have also made £1.5million available to support industry awareness.

The other companies are being urged to follow the example set by Google and reimburse the regulator.

The Treasury Committee's report also called for cryptocurrencies to be regulated.

A spokesperson for Facebook's parent company, Meta, told the Sun: "Promoting financial scams is against our policies and we're dedicating significant resources to tackling this industry-wide issue on and off our platforms."