The Fraud Prevention project is a series of education campaigns run every year by ICPEN countries under one theme but focusing on an issue relevant to each individual participating agency.
Through this initiative we educate market participants about scams and furnish them with appropriate information on how to protect themselves from falling prey to unfair businesses.
Each year more and more member countries of ICPEN implement various Fraud Prevention Month activities. For example in 2009, 29 countries participated in this initiative.
What do we focus on in particular? We have addresses such topics as:
• deceptive and aggressive retail tactics used to lure consumers into an agreement,
• identity theft,
• phishing,
• misleading advertising,
• legal requirements concerning pricing information and labeling,
• online shopping,
• false lottery and business directories,
• health fraud.
Often our campaigns target particular audiences including the young, the elderly, small businesses and charities, and have a range of community, non-government, and private sector organizations as partners.
Fraud Prevention Month
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Scamnesty
United Kingdom
Scamnesty is a national event to raise awareness of scams, carried out in partnership with local authority Trading Standards Services (TSS) during Scams Awareness Month (February). The Office of Fair Trading and TSS encouraged the public to deposit scam mailings they had received into special bins placed in local libraries and other public areas. This year online Scamnesty was piloted, a reporting system to collate email and website scams only. Strategic objective • to increase consumer awareness of scams Communication objectives • to encourage as many TSS as possible to participate in Scamnesty 2010 • to support TSS in running the campaign locally • to promote Scamnesty on a national level • to raise awareness of scams – postal, email, web and text • to pilot online Scamnesty Target audience A review by the OFT in 2006 and research into the psychology of scams completed in 2009 indicated that anyone can fall for a scam, making the potential target audience very wide. This campaign will target all consumers specifically vulnerable consumers (the elderly, unemployed etc). The secondary target audience will comprise of intermediaries such as family, friends, carers, neighbours etc as well as the younger scam victim. Key messages For consumer audiences: • Help us beat the scammers by dropping in your mailings and by forwarding us your scam emails. • Pass on the warning to watch out for scams. • Your actions may help protect others from being targeted by scammers. • If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Activity The campaign was supported by national and regional PR activity, stakeholder support, a national radio campaign and digital campaign including baner advertising and social media activity. -
Promotion of a new piece of legislation: Act on unfair commercial practices
PolandThe aim of the initiative was the dissemination of information about the Act on unfair commercial practices, which came into force on 21 December 2007. The Act is the effect of the transposition of Community directive into the Polish legal system. The OCCP’s past experience shows that both misleading advertising and aggressive sales practices may concern every kind of service. Letters informing about record winnings you will never receive, touting the effects of preparations that – contrary to the promises – do not work, passing on misleading information on bank account interests – these are only a few examples of abuses which have been questioned by the OCCP and with which, thanks to the transposition of the Community rules in Poland, individual consumers will now be able to fight more effectively. The list includes aggressive sales practices, e.g. threats of physical or psychological duress, which limit or may limit a consumer’s freedom of choice. The new legislation enables each consumer to take matters into his or her own hands. Pursuing claims individually is now easier, first of all thanks to the right to bring an action to court in the case of a threat or infringing of economic interests and moving the burden of proof to the trader accused of misleading practices. The aim of the 2008 FPM was to promote this piece of law and spread the information among the biggest possible group of consumers as well as institutions responsible for consumers’ individual rights protection through: - publication of guidelines for the entrepreneurs on the provisions of the Act - workshops for entrepreneurs with a focus on codes of conduct (eg. among advertising agencies) - diiscussion panel with the Council of Consumer Ombudsmen devoted to the application of the Act - articles addressed to institutions responsible for individual consumer rights protection. -
Lucky Luke fights consumer fraud
BelgiumWe have developed a comic strip (Lucky Luke). It consists of 8 stories dealing with different kinds of consumer fraud. The subjects are: Money transfers (like Western Union, Moneygram,…), Identity theft, Misleading advertising, Spam, False event tickets, Counterfeiting, Sweepstakes and Consumer fraud related to travel. Next to each story is an explanation of the practice and some tips to avoid it. 100 000 copies were printed. -
Consumer fraud
BelgiumDuring the whole of March 2009, we were present on different internet forums where consumer problems were discussed. We intervened by giving advice on how to try to find a solution for the problems or where to file a complaint.