OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This open letter from Angela Hewitt, to Isle of Wight Conservative MP, Bob Seely. Ed
Dear Mr Seely
I have just completed a survey on cybercrime for the police. While completing this survey it occurred to me that we are being “bullied” by various service companies i.e electricity, banking, tax, VAT, rates to do returns and payments online.
This is saving them millions of pounds. In the meantime we can be put at risk from cybercrime by being forced to do things online and this risk is increasing. It costs money to get online protection. This cost should be paid by the companies that insist on us doing things online.
The risk of fraudulent copycat sites
There needs to be a campaign to reduce our risk and for those companies that are increasing our risk to cover the cost of our online protection.
They will argue that their system is safe. But that is not the point. The fact we have to go online opens us up to fraudulent copycat sites which we mistakenly think are the real deal.
Proof more needs to be done
The fact that as you say in your newsletter that “last year almost £350,000 of charitable donations ended up in the pockets of criminals over the festive period last year” proves that more need to be done and that those companies that force us to go online need to be the ones that cover the cost.
This will get worse and needs to be addressed now. Thank you.
Image: Jonathan Velasquez under CC BY 2.0
