After raising my concerns, along with other stakeholders, about the Online Safety Bill with regard to paid-for advertising fraud, I am thrilled the Government has listened and took action on this, by tabling an amendment to address the discrepancies between the duties on search services and user-to-user services relating to fraudulent paid-for advertising in the Online Safety Bill.
Without this, as the Treasury Committee I am a member of warned, there will be large financial losses to the public. Up to 40% of all crime is now fraud and, as the report says, 85% of fraud involves the internet in some way or other, so it is crucial that we cover this in the Bill.
The amendment ensures the fraudulent advertising duty for Category 2A services will match the strong duties on large, high-risk user-to-user services in the Online Safety Bill, to ensure consistent outcomes between search and user to user services. The amendment will require the largest search services to use proportionate systems and processes to: prevent individuals from encountering fraudulent advertisements; minimise the length of time that fraudulent advertisements are present; and, once alerted, to swiftly take down fraudulent advertisements. This change will ensure search engines prevent individuals encountering fraudulent advertising and will make it harder for fraudsters to advertise scams online via search services. Failure to live up to these duties will be enforced by Ofcom who will have a range of robust powers to ensure that UK users are protected from online fraud.
I am massively in favour of competition and congratulate search engine platforms on their market dominance, but they have taken that market share in paid-for content away from our local newspapers and other such media. It is therefore crucial that we put those platforms on a fair and level playing field with those other media. I am grateful to the Government for listening to my concerns on this and look forward to continuing to work on this issue in the future.
