Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what guidance his Department issues to (a) retailers and (b) consumers to raise awareness of the threat of online scams.

There is guidance on how to spot and avoid scams available to retailers and consumers from organisations including Citizen’s Advice, Trading Standards, banks, UK Finance, Action Fraud, and the FCA.

In addition, we are currently in the first week of Scams Awareness Month (SAM) – an annual campaign which BEIS supports bringing together organisations nationally and locally to take a united stand against scams and fraud. The campaign which runs until the end of June aims to raise awareness with both consumers and business about all types of scams – online, telephone, mail and at the doorstep – with a focus on encouraging victims to speak up and report to the appropriate authorities.

In the 2017 campaign last July over 360 organisations participated reaching over 1/3^rd million consumers face to face and offline and saw a 17 percent increase during the campaign in people accessing online advice about scams through the Citizens Advice website. We hope to increase on those numbers this year.