Telcos Against Scams
Telecom companies are working together with a focus on raising awareness around scams as it is a growing issue affecting people across the UK. This page features key information about how scams can affect telco providers and their customers with a focus on spotting and stopping scams, supporting customers, and escalating effectively. It also features interactive training for frontline telco staff to complete to grow their scam awareness, and access to the Telcos Against Scams Toolkit.
What is a Telco Against Scams Company?
With the digital age, it is becoming easier for criminals to pose as legitimate companies and scam people out of large sums of money. This not only impacts on customers both financially and emotionally, but also creates a reputational risk for businesses and the wider industry.
Therefore, service providers, communication providers, mobile network operators, and virtual network operators can play a crucial part in combating these scams by becoming a Telco Against Scams company, to learn how to spot signs that a customer could need support and gain information on where to report these incidences to protect themselves from impersonation and their customers.
The Benefits
Increasing employee scam awareness
Telcos Against Scams is designed to help employees wishing to improve their scam awareness and prevention by making simple changes. These might include increasing employees’ awareness of scams through our Telcos Against Scams interactive training.
Empowering customers
We can also have a positive effect on our customers through scam education and empowerment, and also by making sure we use the correct language when speaking to and about scam victims.
Collaborate & learn from others
Collaborate with other telco companies to learn from each other and share examples of good practice.
Why the Work is Important
Only 5% of scams are reported. More than 50% of people aged 65 plus have been targeted by criminals.
There are now 11.8 million people aged 65 or over in the UK. The number of people aged 65+ is projected to rise by over 40 per cent (40.77%) in the next 17 years to over 16 million. By 2033 the number of people aged 85 and over is projected to more than double again to reach 3.2 million, and to account for 5 per cent of the total population.
Daily interactions
Frontline staff are key because you can see the warning signs first when interacting with customers over the phone, as well as facilitating high risk actions such as SIM Swaps etc, and you are able to spot unusual activity and any early warning signs.
Customer contact
Customer facing staff are in a privileged position, sometimes being the only person that customer will speak with that day.
Telco Interactive Training
Complete the online learning session for frontline telco staff to complete to grow their scam awareness. This training can be done in the comfort of your own home, at work or wherever is most convenient for you.
This is an interactive training session which should take approximately 20 minutes to educate yourself and colleagues around what scams out there affect your company and customers.
This is an interactive training session which should take approximately 30 minutes, with videos and audio to watch, and quizzes to test your knowledge!
The TAS Toolkit: Telco Resources
An internal poster has been designed to grow awareness about scams for telco staff, including how scams affect your business and customers.
An external poster has been designed for customers to grow their scam awareness, focusing on specific scams related to the telco industry.
A digital information leaflet can be printed out and handed out to customers and colleagues.
PowerPoint
Social Media Pack
A social media pack has been created to help your organisation raise awareness of scams through your platforms. Please click the red button below to request access to the Social Media Pack.
Registered TAS Companies:
