Meta and NatWest are expanding a first-of-its-kind information sharing partnership to help protect people against fraud. The Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE) is a threat intelligence sharing programme for financial institutions, allowing banks to share intelligence with Meta directly so Meta can use it to stop scammers and protect users. NatWest is one of the first banks in the UK to participate in this pilot, with more scheduled to join.
“This work has already seen us take action against thousands of accounts run by scammers, indicating the importance of banks and platforms working together to tackle this societal issue,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Global Head of Counter-Fraud at Meta. “We will only beat these criminals if we work together and share relevant information related to scams. Financial institutions can share unique information with us which we can in turn use to train our systems to take action against more scams globally.”
The expansion of the pilot has been welcomed by many in the banking industry, as well as by the City of London Police and the National Economic Crime Centre, amongst others.
Key successes from the initial pilot include the takedown of a significant concert ticket scam network attempting to target people in the UK and US. Thanks to data shared between NatWest, Meta and others during the six month pilot, facilitated under the cross-collaborative umbrella of Stop Scams UK, Meta was able to remove approximately 20,000 accounts run by scammers from the 185 URLs shared, which in turn has helped the company to strengthen its fraud detection capabilities.
Feedback following the initial pilot stage has been positive and Meta will now onboard more banks over the coming months as we continue to test and learn.
FIRE is being welcomed as a key step in the fight against scams:
David Lindberg, CEO of Retail Banking, NatWest, said:
“Spotting and stopping fraudsters before they are able to target customers is the best way to address this growing problem. Partnering with Meta is an important step in tackling the epidemic of fraud. We welcome the opportunity to deepen our collaboration and ensure a cross-industry approach to fraud prevention and enforcement.”
Adrian Searle, Director of the National Economic Crime Centre, said:
“The expansion of Meta’s scam reporting channel, following a successful pilot, is welcome news – demonstrating a willingness to help tackle the scourge of online fraud, by bringing together data from across the bank and technology sectors. It follows the establishment of the Online Fraud Charter in 2023, in which leading tech companies signed a voluntary agreement, recognising and seeking to reduce the risk of fraud and financial exploitation of UK citizens on their platforms. Partnership between the public and the private sector is key to preventing this pervasive threat. We look forward to working with Meta, building on FIRE’s early success, sharing data across sectors to impact the Fraud threat at scale.”
Nik Adams, Temporary Assistant Commissioner, City of London Police, said:
“As national lead force for fraud, we welcome the commitments made by Meta after the launch of the Online Fraud Charter last year and now Meta’s scam reporting channel. It is vital for the tech industry to help in the fight against online fraud. We hope this expansion will rapidly increase Meta’s ability to act upon harmful content and to support the wider fight against fraud through the sharing of intelligence and insight that disrupt criminals, design out fraud, and protect victims.”
Mark Tierney, CEO of Stop Scams UK:
“We’re delighted to see some of our member banks join Meta’s FIRE initiative in another positive example of cross-sector collaboration. We believe FIRE could become a gamechanger for reporting fraudulent content, helping protect consumers and ensuring both banks and Meta gain better visibility of the abuse carried out on their systems by scammers. Stop Scams UK passionately believes that collaborative projects such as FIRE can lead to wider data sharing and improve reporting which is key to successfully tackling scams.”
