Digital scams have become ubiquitous in day-to-day life with almost €85 million stolen through frauds and scams in Ireland last year, an increase of 8.8% on the previous year according to FraudSMART, the fraud awareness initiative of the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland.
Telecoms regulator ComReg puts the overall cost of scam phone calls and texts to Irish businesses and individuals at €300m annually.
Just last week, Irish banks issued a scam warning to online shoppers after hundreds of Irish consumers were scammed by a counterfeit website offering well-known perfume brands at extremely low prices.
One man who is doing his bit to take the fight directly to scammers is Jim Browning, a Northern Ireland YouTuber known for exposing the activities of scammers across the world.
"Like everyone else, I got lots and lots of these scam phone calls, and there was one particular day I was working at home, and I thought, I as an engineer, surely, I can try to do something about these scams," Browning told Katie Hannon on Upfront: The Podcast.
Jim Browning, which isn't his real name, keeps his identity a secret online for safety and security reasons.
"I disrupt what are criminal organisations, so really this is much more about protecting me and my family, because the people that I disrupt are multi-millionaires and unfortunately that sort of money buys quite a lot of influence," the popular YouTuber says.
LISTEN: Jim Browning speaks to Katie Hannon on Upfront: The Podcast
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Browning, who has over four million subscribers on YouTube, says his channel was an accidental success that started when he decided to make a recording of a scam taking place.
"It all started off with just a clear recording of a scam happening. I uploaded that to YouTube and for some reason, I still don't know why, it really caught on."
Browning, a self-styled 'scambaiter' intercepts both phone and email scams. Usually, these scams involve people who pretend to be from big companies, banks, or government institutions, to trick victims into giving them access to their computers, or worse, their online banking accounts.
For Browning’s vigilante methods to work, he first needs to give scammers a sense that their scam is working on him.
"I deliberately allow the scam to happen. I let scammers onto my computer. And if they do that, that is actually a weak point in their scam. And what I do is I reverse that, and I get access to the scammer's computer," the virtual vigilante, who works as a software engineer by day, says.
"As soon as I can do that, it opens a picture of their world. It tells me what they're up to so I can see them scamming other people. And because I've got lots of access to their computer networks, some of them even have CCTV and I can see them. And if they have webcams on their laptops or computers, sometimes I can switch those on. So, on the YouTube channel, I can see the people who are making those phone calls."
WATCH: A video from Jim Browning's YouTube channel showing a scam call centre being raided
Apart from educating people about what to look out for and how to avoid being scammed, Browning says it’s also nice to get one over on a scammer and pick their scams apart.
On one occasion, he hacked the voice message that scammers were using on automated calls to prospective victims and altered it to warn recipients that the calls were fraudulent.
"Instead of a message, which says, ‘this is Amazon,’ it says, ‘this is a scammer from India, if you want to waste their time you can press one, but please don't tell them I've changed their message,’" Browning said.
"I could watch as they were getting hundreds of these phone calls, and nobody was falling for the scam, and it was kind of nice to be able to just step back and have a bit of laugh about how they had to up the call rates and that cost them more money."
In another instance, he told of how he spooked a scammer who had gained access to his computer.
He was able to seize control of the scammer’s computer in India and set the criminal’s wedding photo as the display picture of his own desktop in Northern Ireland.
"I let him onto the computer and suddenly he can see his own face. You obviously have to blur out the other people in the photograph because there may be innocent bystanders. But that is an incredibly effective way to stop people from scamming. I do genuinely think I've stopped some scammers as a result of doing something like that."
While Browning has spent years turning the tables on fraudsters he was once tricked by a scammer himself and he says anyone can fall for a scam. In his case he had been convinced to delete his popular YouTube channel.
"I got a message saying, ‘you've got two of these [YouTube] IDs, you need to delete one.’ And that rang a bell with me because that happened to be right in my case. But as it turned out, the message wasn't targeted at all. It just so happened to hit me. And that's why I say anyone can fall for a scam if the circumstances are right.
"It is a numbers game mostly. If you can put enough phone numbers into your system, you're eventually going to get somebody who's having an off day or by coincidence is interacting with their bank or Amazon or Microsoft or whatever and just won't see that they’ve got caught up in this."
Jim Browning’s top tips to avoid being scammed
Just stop: "The easiest piece of advice is step back. If you're not sure, ask another person. It is difficult to figure out which [message] is genuine, and which is not, particularly at this time of year."
Check the URL: "Look at the URL and make sure it is genuine. Don’t click on any link immediately, even for genuine companies. You can go to the company’s website, say Amazon, without clicking on the link. Just go in your browser by typing in the address yourself and check if the reference number is there. That helps you be more certain."
Don’t ever share details: "The more information the scammers get on you, the more believable they might be with a follow up scam like with a phone call. If someone calls you saying they are from your bank, don’t give them any details. Instead, call your bank yourself to check if the call you got was genuine."
"The real company or your real bank will always be happy for you to stop the call and call back for security reasons. If they try to keep you on the line and not hang up, it’s more likely that they are a scammer."
Listen to Jim Browning speaking to Katie Hannon on Upfront: The Podcast here, on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify.
Watch Upfront with Katie Hannon at 10.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player where our panel and live studio audience will be discussing scams and how to police them.
