For a consumer to lose trust in a business, all it takes is for a scammer to attempt to impersonate the brand. The scam doesn’t have to be affiliated with the business in any way, and the attacker doesn’t even have to be successful in their attack, but the company will still suffer.
This is according to a new report from digital identity provider Callsign, which claims that more than a third (35 percent) of consumers in the UK lose trust in a business after receiving a scam message.
Polling almost 10,000 people worldwide for the report, Callsign found that financial services and ecommerce firms are most at risk. The respondents said 67 percent of all scam messages they receive claim to represent their bank, or a retailer (43 percent).
To make matters worse, consumers are being flooded with fraudulent communications; on average, an individual will receive 1,133 malicious messages a year.
The most vulnerable communication channel seems to be SMS, as just one percent of consumers in the UK see it as a safe way to communicate with their bank or a retailer.
“Organizations need to re-evaluate the communications channels they use to interact with customers to better establish trust. With fraudsters monopolizing open channels such as SMS and email, these channels cannot be relied upon to also authenticate identity,” said Stuart Dobbie, SVP Innovation at Callsign.
“Our research shows that over a third (38 percent) of UK consumers think identity is the problem and that people should prove who they are when signing up to use a platform to stop scammers. These consumer concerns emphasize organizations must wake up to the importance of digital identification.”