Dec 05, 2024
20 min read

Fraud in the Digital Age: Who’s Responsible? “What The Fraud?” Podcast

Dive into the world of fraud with the "What The Fraud?" podcast! 🚀 Today’s guest, Jessica Cath, a Financial Crime Partner at Thistle Initiatives, shares insights on what works against increasingly complex fraud schemes, what doesn’t, and the essential tools needed to stay ahead of fraudsters.

TOM TARANIUK: Hello and welcome back to “What The Fraud?”, a podcast by Sumsub where digital fraudsters meet their match. I’m Thomas Taraniuk, currently responsible for some of our very exciting partnerships here at Sumsub, the global verification platform, helping to verify users, businesses and of course transactions as well. 

Today, we’re going to explore the growing issue of fraud in the digital world, discussing the role of stakeholders and strategies for tackling this complex challenge. I’ll also address a critical question with our guest: who should bear the responsibility for preventing and addressing fraud?

Joining me today is Jessica Cath, a financial crime partner at Thistle Initiatives, a compliance consultancy firm operating in the UK and EU to support regulated businesses. Balancing multiple clients with expertise, Jessica develops risk-based strategies that strengthen financial crime defenses while enabling businesses to thrive. With a passion for crime prevention and a talent for simplifying complex processes, Jess makes protecting businesses smarter, easier, and more cost-effective.

So, Jess, welcome. Great to have you on “What The Fraud?”. How are you today?

JESSICA CATH: I’m very well. Thank you very much for having me. And what a glowing introduction. 

The most pressing challenges in fraud prevention today

TOM TARANIUK: So as I touched on global online fraud losses are indeed on the rise. They are becoming more complex and more costly every single year, with billions of pounds lost on an annual basis. So it’s no longer an isolated issue. And understanding who is responsible is more crucial than ever. So, Jess, from your perspective, what are the most pressing challenges in fraud prevention today? 

JESSICA CATH: The challenges are very difficult, because they are far-reaching and multifaceted. There are numerous issues associated with the fast pace of change in fraud. Fraud typologies evolve constantly, with fraudsters staying ahead of the curve by using tactics like deepfake photos and voices, creating substantial challenges. As a result, many traditional control mechanisms quickly become outdated.

In addition to these rapid changes, businesses face pressing commercial challenges. Particularly in the UK, many organizations struggle to allocate sufficient resources to build effective controls. The challenge lies in addressing an ever-changing threat landscape within a constrained commercial environment.

When having these conversations, I focus on finding a balance: how to develop the most effective systems possible while ensuring that businesses remain operational. These dual pressures—managing evolving fraud and navigating financial constraints—are the core challenges we encounter frequently.

Who holds the primary responsibility for preventing fraud?

TOM TARANIUK: Who do you think bears that burden? I mean whose primary responsibility is it to tackle this? And why do you think that, Jess?

JESSICA CATH: This is a fun question, actually, because pretty much everyone is responsible for preventing fraud. The traditional responsibility has always been on the banks. Well, now, of course, we’ve got the mandatory reimbursement model for payments firms, but the banks have really been holding this up for a long time. The traditional view is if it’s linked to fraudulent payments, let’s make sure that it’s the banks’ responsibility for sorting this out.

But ultimately there are so many other players when it comes to fraud prevention. If we look at it, lots of the fraud comes from tech platforms. So social media platforms, marketplaces, you know, Tik-Tok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Marketplace—all of those are really primary sources for a lot of fraud that takes place. And at the moment, there’s not a lot of responsibility on these players in order to try and stop fraud at the source, which is the challenge.

And then, on top of that, you’ve got governments and you’ve got regulatory frameworks. They also need to play a bigger role in preventing fraud—all of those players do. 

And then, on top of that, the final player is people themselves, because we need to be responsible for our own payments.

TOM TARANIUK: Of course. But I’m getting from that, Jessica, that you don’t think it should be the onus on one party to button this responsibility as well.

JESSICA CATH: Not at all. No, it really needs to be a combination of all of these. But the the current strategy with the focus just on pushing the responsibility back to banks and financial services, means that we don’t have a joined up approach to fraud prevention and actually wider financial crime prevention. We always think about fraud in a silo, but actually the proceeds of fraud are laundered through different ways and different means. It’s closely linked to money laundering.

But ultimately, all these efforts need to be integrated to effectively prevent fraud. For instance, I attended an FCA sandbox initiative where they were analyzing APP fraud data to develop better alerting mechanisms for customers. The results were significantly improved when data from telecommunications and social media platforms was incorporated.

For example, when trying to prevent a customer from making a fraudulent payment, the bank could provide an alert saying, “We believe this is a fraudulent payment based on observed behaviors.” But the system becomes even stronger when additional layers of data are included, such as, “This phone number is linked to 20–30 accounts across different institutions, and its behavioral patterns show only outbound calls.” This creates a much clearer and more convincing warning that the activity is likely fraudulent and not conducted by a legitimate account owner.

This approach highlights the importance of a unified, cross-sector effort. Relying solely on banks and financial services to combat fraud is insufficient; collaboration across industries is essential for more effective prevention.

But I also do think a little bit more responsibility should be put back on the customer for trying to really think through and be responsible for the payments that you have made.

Distributing responsibility for fraud prevention between users, firms and regulators

TOM TARANIUK: Placing the onus on the customer is, of course, always the most challenging aspect, isn’t it, Jessica? Ensuring that individuals take steps to protect themselves is no small task. Would you say there has been a shift in how responsibility is distributed among these agencies? It seems that more companies are collaborating to identify trends and safeguard not just their licenses, businesses, and shareholders, but also their users and applicants.

JESSICA CATH: There are lots of initiatives where firms are trying to join forces, but it is very challenging. Primary challenges are GDPR, privacy, data sharing concerns. I know we’ve been talking about data sharing for about five years and it’s very boring to still be talking about it. But to have a joined up strategy, we need to have more firms sharing data and being comfortable sharing data.

I believe Meta announced at the start of October an initiative where they are sharing data with six other banks, aiming to improve the efficiency of information and intelligence sharing within that group. However, this collaboration only involves the six largest banks and one major player, meaning it excludes many smaller payment providers who often experience significant fraud at the front end. Additionally, we recently received an update from the ICO, which outlined clear expectations for data sharing, particularly in the context of fraud prevention.

But you still see a lot of people struggling to get it over the line with their legal teams who are saying, “No-no-no, we cannot share anything due to privacy concerns”. And I think that comes back to the responsibility of government setting the tone and the framework.

So we do have flexibility to share information for financial crime purposes, written into the New Economic, Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. But it’s setting the tone and the expectation that you do use these flexibilities to actually go and do some of the data sharing that we need to do.

Industries where collaboration is essential to succeed and stop fraud

TOM TARANIUK: So from the policymaker side, of course, there needs to be a prompt so that industries verticals feel more able to share. Right? From your perspective, do you think are there any specific verticals or industries where collaboration is basically essential for them to thrive and stop fraud?

JESSICA CATH: It has to be the social media companies and telecommunications. Those are the two key industries that are really going to be vital when it comes to sharing information and data. If you look at all of the numbers, the social media platforms and marketplaces are the key sources of fraud. So we need to bring those into scope.

TOM TARANIUK: When we’re talking about these social media companies, these marketplaces, which are more prone to fraud or more targeted—do you believe that the monitoring is more important than the initial onboarding of these users?

Is monitoring more important than KYC?

JESSICA CATH: That’s actually a very great question. So no, controversially, no.

Many people associate fraud prevention primarily with monitoring—examining behavioral patterns and identifying anything unusual. While monitoring is crucial, especially for stopping both outbound and inbound payments, it’s often not utilized effectively across the board. The inbound side, in particular, is an area where monitoring efforts need significant improvement, as most focus is currently on outbound transactions.

Effective monitoring must also involve sharing intelligence, integrating data from external sources, and cross-referencing information for better insights. However, monitoring alone isn’t sufficient for fraud prevention—it’s only truly effective if you have a thorough understanding of your customer. And while it might sound repetitive or even boring, knowing your customer is fundamental to any successful fraud prevention strategy.

But if we look at the “KYC” acronym, it’s actually “Knowing Your Customer”.

Suggested read: KYC Verification: Full Guide to Know Your Customer Compliance

And it’s easier to say this when we’re looking at the investment space or private banking space where you’ve still got good interaction with your customers, but in a retail payment space where you’ve got really fast onboarding, you need to be able to ask the appropriate questions in order to have a streamlined onboarding journey, and still know your customer at least a little bit in order to understand what normal behavior should be for that customer. 

TOM TARANIUK: When you’re saying knowing your customer: knowing what they’ve been, where they’ve been, and, what they’re doing now—not the only not only that snapshot, but furthermore, everything that they could be doing in the future?

JESSICA CATH: Yes. And it’s pushing that a little bit further. So the classic Know Your Customer is knowing who they are, verifying their identity. All of that good stuff. But adding to that is knowing your customers normal swipe patterns on their phone, or knowing how they log in to their device. All of that can be captured. Of course, that flows into the monitoring process as well, but knowing all of that upfront and starting to build that dynamic picture of the customer is really key. 

So there are a lot of kind of biometrics that you should be capturing. If you don’t need to know your customer and their full profile in that traditional sense, there are a lot of things that you can at least know from a biometric perspective that that customer is who they say they are.

What can governments do to get ahead of fraud?

TOM TARANIUK: There’s one thing capturing all that information, analyzing it. But if you’re not sharing it with your counterparts within the industry or outside of it, even it can be quite difficult. And I think that’s where governance policies and regulations will play a foundational role in preventing fraud. From the get go, I mean, there’s often a lag behind the fast paced evolution of digital threats that we see on the market. Prevention seems to be more of a reactive approach rather than a proactive approach, even in places with strong regulations like the UK. Jess, what can governments do to get ahead of fraud? I mean, rather than just responding after it happens, is it even possible?

JESSICA CATH: It’s tricky. We have seen some good moves, but again, they’ve been more reactive. So we’ve had the recent Failure to Prevent Fraud guidance that came out. But that was a long process for them to come out with that guidance. So it came out through the Economic Crime Act. It took a long time to produce the guidance. By this point, fraud typologies have moved on. And it’s not a huge clause anyway: only specific large businesses fall under under that failure to prevent offense.

But if you look at it from a fraudsters perspective, they can move so much faster. We have a lot of crazy fraud typologies where you’ve got massive crime groups running full fraud as a service offering. So, you know, scam houses in Southeast Asia which have full criminal gangs, people that are human trafficked into committing scams and becoming scammers, it’s actually impossible for a single government to start dealing with fraud nationally. When we look at these international crime groups, we need to get better at cross-border anti fraud prevention. So I think geopolitics and there’s a wider thing to play here in terms of international fraud prevention.

When it comes to simple things nationally I think within the UK we don’t treat fraud as importantly as we do money laundering. So we still treat AML and money laundering as the key problem, an offense. We’ve got all of our regulatory frameworks really focusing on preventing money laundering.

Suggested read: Breaking Down KYC/AML Regulations in the UK: Easy-to-read Guide (2025)

So I think the first step nationally is to start treating fraud as seriously as money laundering and really pull that failure to prevent fraud offense into wider scope and make sure it’s better than the failure to prevent bribery offense. When that was launched we haven’t seen many offenses come out on that. So we need to actually make sure there are a few offenses from this, this new failure to prevent fraud.

And then the final thing nationally is getting a digital identity system in place. So we’ve been talking about this for ages. The digital identity and trust framework are not quite into force, not clear on the direction of travel, but not having a digital identity in the UK is a big loophole for fraudsters. 

So that was a long answer, but hopefully starts with the international picture because ultimately fraud is is not national. But when we start to look at the UK, there are some clear measures that I think the government could start to do.

Should countries adopt policies introduced in the UK, and what challenges might arise?

TOM TARANIUK: Definitely with other countries, of course, they are often looking at some of the policies that we implement as well. I mean, the UK has created compensation schemes which will, benefit fraud victims. On a global basis, let’s say other governments and policymakers are looking at the United Kingdom. Do you think they should adopt some of the programs that we have? And what challenges might arise if they do or don’t?

JESSICA CATH: This is an interesting question. We know that Europe is looking at similar measures. They are looking at the new APP fraud mandatory reimbursement model in the UK and considering adopting something similar. Alongside PSD3, which they are still working on at the moment. Having a UK national reimbursement model does not fully work because we see a lot of cross-border, fraud payments leaving the UK. So when we’re looking at having an effective reimbursement model, having it just based in the UK is not that effective because a lot of fraud, fraud goes overseas and the proceeds go overseas. So we do need to look at this beyond UK borders. And we’ll have to see what happens with Europe when they start to look at PSD3.

There was one other thing I wanted to raise on that one though, which links back to something we were talking about in terms of fraud not being taken so seriously compared to money laundering. So globally, we have things like the FATF gray list and black list when it comes to how countries are preventing money laundering and having effective frameworks for anti-money laundering. 

Suggested read: Understanding the FATF Black and Grey Lists in 2024

I wonder whether or not we could put something similar in place when it comes to fraud globally. So actually setting the standards and defining a bit of national accountability for fraud prevention would at least set us on the right path. But we are nowhere near that yet.

Who should pay compensation costs

TOM TARANIUK: 100%. I’ve never heard anyone call it FATF as well. They’ve released quite a lot, as of late, of course, with the Travel Rule and some of very poignant points which are being implemented by different policymakers, especially the UK, of course, by 2025. But when we’re talking about this compensation that we address just now, could businesses actually pass these costs to consumers and businesses, is that a good idea? How can they say charging a higher price or finding other fees actually affect this? I mean, can we find a balance?

JESSICA CATH: So some firms are already applying a compensation fee. And we have a limit applied to that. So yes, some have already said they are doing that. As to whether or not we’re going to see any other impact, I think what we will see is firms looking to reduce their risk appetite when it comes to certain customer types. So instead of layering on more and more fees, what they will start to do is if they are seeing a higher fraud typology in a certain type of customer, they will just stop taking on that customer, or they will only allow that customer to have access to a very reduced set of services, instead of having access to the whole product set. 

So I think yes, we will see some fees, but more likely we will see a change in risk appetite, which is not what the UK government was trying to achieve with this policy, because their whole messaging has been around vulnerable customers access to financial services. And in the theme of consumer duty, that’s not their aim, but that’s where I think we’ll probably see the changes. 

What can users do to protect themselves?

TOM TARANIUK: What can users do to protect themselves on the basis? Because we’re talking about sort of the macro level—policies which are being implemented, the effects and what businesses should do. But everyday consumers are being affected. What would be your advice, Jessica?

JESSICA CATH: This is a really difficult one because fraud is constantly changing and an even more difficult to spot. Because of deepfakes, fraudsters are making use of banking. It sounds exactly like your bank when you’re speaking to a lot of fraudsters. They know how to make things look and sound and feel very much like the real deal. So it’s very tricky.

But my main piece of guidance is

  • to have good digital hygiene
  • make sure that you are doing your due diligence
  • never click on any links
  • make sure you go to the original website.

And unfortunately we’ve just got to a stage now where you before you make a payment, trust no one.

Suggested read: From AI to Fraud Democratization and Real Identity Theft: Fraud Trends 2024-2025

Should digital hygiene be part of business education for users?

TOM TARANIUK: I completely agree there as well. I mean digital platforms have reshaped, both education, work, shopping, your day to day life as well. So when do you think is the best time to start teaching this say personal hygiene around cyber security and acknowledging digital threats? Should it be part of business education for the user base, or do you think it should be part of something much grander, i.e., let’s say a government initialized plan?

JESSICA CATH: At the moment, a lot of the education and awareness schemes are again pushed back on banks and financial services to provide awareness and education for their customers. 

A lot of banks have to put warning notices or training messages or produce training videos or training emails to ensure that their own customers are made aware of the risks. But it needs to start much earlier than that. So this should be something that’s brought right through schooling, and then brought right into the workforce. 

TOM TARANIUK: I agree, and I think I speak for a lot of people when it’s boring to do right to go through some, some of those educational videos, sign the the small sign off on the small print that you’re looking through as well. But, that’s our duty, as you can see, I think, to protect ourselves and those around us as well. 

How should companies adopt proactive anti-fraud measures?

Jess, we’ve just discussed what governments can do to stay ahead of fraud, but let’s now look at another role of businesses and individuals. How do you think companies should adopt a proactive anti-fraud measure beyond just setting up a web page?

JESSICA CATH: Anti-fraud measures are not just the simple things. We have to step back and think about the entire end to end flow of fraud prevention. So very boring again. But I would really look at starting with a good risk assessment, because a lot of firms still don’t really understand how they’re exposed to the risk of fraud. You need to start with understanding:

  • who your customers are
  • how they’re most exposed to fraud
  • think about insider fraud and employee fraud
  • how your entire business is exposed to fraud. 

Once you’ve got that in place, you can then start to build effective controls mapped directly to that.

We’ve talked a little bit today about some of the controls when you’re dealing with onboarding. So when you’re looking at customer facing fraud, really understanding who your customer is, not just from a name perspective, but looking at their biometric behaviors, their phone patterns, and then really mapping that against your monitoring. So really having effective transaction monitoring, monitoring where customers are who is accessing their phone and device, does it look like them when they are doing a transaction.

To all of that is the full end to end free flow of customer monitoring. And it needs to be mapped all the way through that journey right from initial onboarding through to transactions and checkout, and ongoing monitoring. 

How can companies implement educational programs to help applicants understand fraud prevention and protect themselves?

TOM TARANIUK: Completely understand that. And from the perspective of obviously implementing anti-fraud measures, you’ve got a playbook. You understand the customer profile, the applicant profile and who’s in there and who shouldn’t be. Right. But at the end of the day, how could these companies actually implement the educational schemas to such as, gamification, social media and other elements to engage these applicants and make it interactive in a way which they understand fraud prevention as well, and how to protect themselves?

JESSICA CATH: I agree with you around educating customers and the need for customer awareness. And again, education and awareness works best when it’s dynamic, when it’s tailored to the customer, when the messaging is very clear. So for example, you could have an educational video utilizing some sort of Instagram influencer, who is really known for young people and then build the education campaign off that. Yes, that would be great, but that’s expensive. It’s complicated. And ultimately going beyond the where are you think the responsibility lies for banks and for payments firms and financial institutions? So, yes, that’s the best way of doing an education campaign is to make it very bespoke, make it interesting, use moving pictures, use videos. But ultimately it’s unrealistic especially for those smaller payments players, do they have access to the resources to, the funding to be able to build all of these very complicated awareness campaigns.

TOM TARANIUK: How can transparency for these banks, these fintechs, actually help to reassure customers around the digital services?

JESSICA CATH: So when we looked at this a piece recently, and I can’t quite remember exactly where I read this, but trust in financial services as a whole is quite low. So that’s what you’re alluding to, that people don’t trust the whole financial services industry. But people do trust their bank, so they do still trust their bank. And I do think that even though the impression and the perception is that banks are not transparent and we don’t trust the industry, people do still trust that 1 or 2 main banks or providers that they use. And that, of course, is actually exploited by fraudsters.

So I think there is enough transparency and trust between direct relationships with direct customers. Of course, there’s a lot more that we can do. And we do have a lot of new reports that come out on an annual basis to show reimbursement numbers. And that’s all clear and transparent, and it’s in the public domain for people to go and read and look at. So I personally think we’re probably quite transparent and there is enough trust with your specific bank. 

TOM TARANIUK: That’s really interesting. But I do want to play devil’s advocate because of course, many fraud cases for these banks goes unreported, right? Especially smaller incidents as well. So we’d love to ask you, Jessica, why do you think that is? If they have, a lot of trust in their bank in terms of individuals reporting or lack thereof, rather of reporting fraud? I mean, even if it seems minor.

Reporting fraud

JESSICA CATH: Great question. And I don’t think it’s down to the banks. This is more down to reporting entities and investigatory bodies. So if we take Action Fraud, for example, which is the main body, where people report instances of fraud, it’s very unlikely that anything’s going to happen after you report that to Action Fraud. And that’s one of the main routes.

Now, of course, Action Fraud is being completely revamped and relaunched next year, and we wait with bated breath to see what that’s going to look like. But at the moment, if you have been a victim of fraud, your main route is to report it to something like Action Fraud and it’s very unlikely anything’s going to happen. So why would you report it?

What type of technology will have the greatest impact on fraud reporting in the future?

TOM TARANIUK: Having these intermediaries to report fraud, it makes it difficult, right? I mean, there are technologies which make things easier, but what sort of technology do you think, Jessica, has the biggest impact on the reporting of fraud in the future? And what risks do you think they bring as well? I mean, do you see anything that is a game changer in the near future for this, this type of, let’s say, reporting.

JESSICA CATH: So in the reporting space we just need to have a joined up approach. So you know we have really clear reporting mechanisms for suspicious activity through Saw reporting to the National Crime Agency.

Suggested read: Complete Guide to Suspicious Activity Reports

When you’re looking at specific fraud circumstances, of course if it’s a suspicious flow, you’re going to report it to the NCA. But you’ve also got other institutions that you might report to you like Action Fraud. There needs to be a joined up approach and the technology that’s required there is actually sitting on the the back end at the NCA itself so that they can really consume all of that data, pick out all of those criminal groups and behavioral patterns and networks, and then really investigate and start to get some more of the money back from these crimes. 

However, on the banking side, on the payment side, and on the financial services side, when it comes to technology, there’s a lot more that we can utilize when it comes to identifying instances of suspicion. So that’s if you have a mutual account and you’re looking through for flow of funds and you’re looking for, the laundering of the proceeds of fraud. And then there’s more technology can use at the point of transaction when you’re looking to try and prevent instances of fraud in those milliseconds, which is very hard. There’s more technology that you can use for onboarding when you’re looking to stop fraudulent identities.

So there’s a lot of really amazing new technologies that are coming out, particularly in the biometric space, which I’ve mentioned, at the start of this session. For example, you’ve got biometric vein scanners that could be used as part of your onboarding journey, which is much more effective than a fingerprint. 

Suggested read: Biometric Authentication—Benefits and Risks (2024)

Although you might then get into some conversations about whether or not people want their vein patterns scanned. And then on the top of that, you’ve got different machine learning models that people are using and really exciting ways to try and spot those instances of suspicion very quickly. And we’re seeing a lot in things like synthetic data sets. Using anonymized synthetic data sets to go in and train these models, of course, that means that even if you haven’t seen the typology in house, your model can be trained on something that it hasn’t seen using this synthetic data.

Those are a few things that are quite exciting. But of course, on the flip side, there’s a lot of exciting technology which the fraudsters are also using. So it’s difficult to keep up it.

How will digital fraud prevention evolve over the next 5 to 10 years?

TOM TARANIUK: It’s difficult. And as you rightly mentioned, having data is essential to improving solutions. Looking ahead, do you foresee digital fraud prevention evolving significantly over the next 5 to 10 years? Will responsibility continue to shift as new onboarding and safety measures are implemented across these businesses?

JESSICA CATH: It’s going to shift massively. So it already has shifted massively in the last couple of years. But we’ve had the the government’s big fraud strategy, a lot of announcements. The mandatory reimbursement model has been a big shift. And we’ve got a lot of new technologies in order to prevent this. I really do see this as a big shift change from just focusing on AML. I’m really looking at bringing fraud into the limelight. It’s 40% of all of the UK’s crime. We cannot not do something about this.

So there will be a very big shift in fraud prevention efforts. And we’ve seen it in-house here. So we have a lot more requests to support on the building of fraud controls, which we hadn’t before, that were more focused on AML. 

So fraud being a weaker younger brother compared to AML—that’s changing massively and that’s really driving the direction of travel for fraud prevention.

If you could implement only one change to make the most impact on fraud prevention in the coming years, what would it be?

TOM TARANIUK: Definitely some great points there, Jess. And as we’ve highlighted throughout this, you’ve shared a lot of experience around what you do on a day-to-day basis, dealing with these clients, which are trying to put in the right frameworks and make sure they are protected. But from your experience and looking forward now, if you could implement one change, let’s say, to make the most impact and fraud prevention in the coming years, what do you think it would be?

JESSICA CATH: This is a very difficult question. And you’ve put me very much on the spot. I’m going to be really boring. And for most firms at the moment, they still don’t understand what fraud is and what their fraud exposure is. So they just need to strip it back. Instead of trying to jump straight into really fancy AI tech, just strip it back and understand what your fraud is. So we deal with a lot of firms that are very different industries. And fraud for coots is very different to fraud for a small payments firm. And you need to understand what that is before you start building controls to prevent it. 

Quick fire round

TOM TARANIUK: I’ve really enjoyed this episode. Believe me, it’s not over yet. We’ve actually got the end of show five quickfire questions to get through to get to know you a little bit better from our audience perspective. So are you ready? When choosing a digital wallet, Jessica, do you go for more features or for better security?

JESSICA CATH: I have lots of them for different purposes. So, for the ones I use, actually to make my transactions, I’m looking for more features. And then for the I then have layers of accounts, and I look for security at the one that’s closest to where my money goes into.

TOM TARANIUK: Fantastic. Well, I think a very good answer, actually. But we’re going on to number two now, which is strong passwords or biometric authentication, which would you rather?

JESSICA CATH: Biometric.

TOM TARANIUK: Biometric? It’s interesting. We get mixed mixed results from these answers. Number three: is online fraud more about technology or human error?

JESSICA CATH: I think it’s still human error.

TOM TARANIUK: Still a lot in the human errors is part and parcel I think as well. But number four: what’s one habit you rely on to stay safe online? 

JESSICA CATH: Never click any links. I think I said it before, never click any links you have.

TOM TARANIUK: Well, you haven’t opened your email in a while. Number five, if you could have any other career other than the one that you’re currently in, Jessica, what would it be?

JESSICA CATH: Oh my gosh, this is such an embarrassing answer because it’s something that will shock you. But I have a love of big HGV lorries and I’d probably be a truck driver or truck driver.

TOM TARANIUK: Yeah, that sounds quite therapeutic actually. They’ve created video games. Truck driver video games for that reason as well, and I’ve had a go. It’s quite fun.

JESSICA CATH: So have I indeed. But don’t tell anyone, what everyone’s going know now. 

TOM TARANIUK: It’s gonna be on the internet. Well, brilliant. Thank you so much, Jessica, for those answers. It’s been a absolute pleasure having you on the show with us today. 

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