UK lawmakers call for tougher crackdown on online scammers, cyberflashing

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LONDON (Reuters) – Google, Facebook and different online companies must be held legally accountable for commercials on their platforms to be able to forestall fraudsters scamming tens of millions of shoppers, a cross-party group of British lawmakers has mentioned.

Britain has proposed a landmark online security legislation to punish abuses equivalent to baby pornography, racism and violence in opposition to ladies, however a joint committee of lawmakers drawn from each homes of parliament mentioned on Tuesday it ought to go a step additional to cowl paid-for adverts.

“Excluding paid-for promoting will go away service suppliers with little incentive to take away dangerous adverts, and dangers encouraging additional proliferation of such content material,” the joint committee report mentioned.

The Financial Conduct Authority additionally needs adverts on social media and search engines like google, at the moment excluded from the draft legislation, to be included after 754 million kilos ($999.65 million) was stolen nL8N2QU29V from shoppers within the first six months of this 12 months.

The report additionally backed a Law Commission advice to make cyberflashing, or the unsolicited sending of obscene photos or video recordings, which are sometimes a function of sexual harassment, unlawful.

The draft legislation is because of be authorised in 2022 and authorities has two months to say if it should again the advice, together with a number of others which lawmakers say are wanted to “call time on the Wild West online”.

“The period of self-regulation for huge tech has come to an finish. The corporations are clearly accountable for companies they’ve designed and revenue from, and should be held to account for the selections they make,” mentioned Damian Collins, who chairs the joint committee.

Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom ought to draw up necessary codes of follow for the web service suppliers, the report mentioned. There should, nonetheless, be “sturdy protections” for freedom of expression, together with an automated exemption for recognised information publishers, it added.

Britain’s monetary companies minister John Glen mentioned final month he was “very sympathetic” to introducing online adverts into the invoice or comparable motion.

The FCA spent 600,000 kilos on Google to warn about rip-off adverts, although the online big has since mentioned it should solely take adverts from corporations regulated by the FCA, and provided a $3 million credit score to the regulator.

“Without a decisive response from the federal government and the tech giants, many extra people will sadly fall sufferer to those scammers,” mentioned Mel Stride, chair of parliament’s treasury committee, which backs the advice to assist take away fraudulent online adverts.

($1 = 0.7543 kilos)

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Bernadette Baum)



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