George Hogg: Bank of Scotland - Frauds and Scams

George Hogg introduced our speakers for the evening, Amber Reid and Laura Fraser, Customer Support Specialists from the Royal Bank of Scotland. Their presentation was delivered to us at the Mansfield House Hotel via Zoom, on the topic of “Frauds and Scams”.

The presentation touched on some of the techniques used by fraudsters and scammers to collect personal information about individuals whom they intend to scam or defraud and what we can do to protect our own personal information. Also mentioned were some of the things we should look out for when receiving unsolicited e-mails and phone calls from people or organisations that we were not expecting contact from. Fraudsters have even been known to use online dating sites to gain the confidence and play on the emotions of their victims with the intention of extorting monies, thus illustrating the dangers of talking to people online but have never seen face to face.

Both Amber and Laura emphasised throughout their presentation the importance of keeping our personal information safe and what we should do if we think we have become a victim of a fraud or a scam.

The presentation proved very informative and interesting and was well received by the club members. The vote of thanks was given by our club president Scott Elliot.

This was a most helpful presentation in that it proved again that a combination of Hawick's Rotarians meeting in person and receiving presentations from experts using Zoom works really well. Amber is based in Langholm and Laura in Inverness but were able to play a full part in our Mansfield House meeting.