UK plans to shift fraud fight onto telecoms, tech companies

The UK government announced a new fraud strategy that shifts more responsibility for preventing scams onto telecoms, technology platforms and financial firms, creates an Online Crime Centre (backed by over £30 million) to disrupt organized fraud, and replaces the criticized Action Fraud service with a national Report Fraud platform for better data-driven disruption. The plan emphasizes upstream prevention, real-time threat-data sharing and a proposed scam-call tracing system by 2028, but stops short of imposing broad legal obligations, drawing criticism from banks and consumer advocates who say platforms should be held more accountable.