Met Police Chief Says Victims of Online Fraud Shouldn’t be “Rewarded”

When it comes to crime, the digital world is the new battlefront for government agencies and the police but one police officer doesn’t think that victims of online fraud should be “rewarded”.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe is the Metropolitan police commissioner and made some comments regarding victims of online fraud, in particular, those who lose money as a result of the crime. Speaking the UK newspaper outlet, The Times, he commented saying that people should be more responsible for updating their anti-virus and improving their passwords. With Which?’s executive director, Richard Lloyd, stating that when the group investigated last year they “found too often that banks were dragging their feet when dealing with fraud. The priority should be for banks to better protect their customers, rather than trying to shift blame to the victims of fraud”.

A particular comment Hogan-Howe made was that “if you are continually rewarded for bad behaviour you will probably continue to do it but if the obverse is true you might consider changing your behaviour”. He goes on to suggest that if you hadn’t updated your software recently they could offer you back only half of what was taken.

The Met have clarified that the comments shouldn’t be read as a proposal for victims of fraud to not receive full compensation but that customers need to ensure that basic protection is carried out, with anti-virus software and passwords checked and updated on a regular basis.