Crypto and Tech Companies Unite Against Online Fraud, Ripple and Coinbase Lead

Tech companies across social media, dating apps, financial institutions and crypto have announced a new coalition, Tech Against Scams, aimed at helping these firms respond to and prevent online fraud and financial schemes that target consumers across industries.

The coalition includes Coinbase, Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, Meta, Kraken, Ripple and Gemini, as well as the Global Anti-Scam Organization.

Tech Against Scams will serve as a primary convening body where participating tech companies will collaborate on ways to take action against the tools used by scammers, educate and protect consumers and disrupt rapidly evolving financial scams. This work will include sharing best practices, threat intelligence, and other tips and information to help keep users safe and protected before they become victim to an online fraud scheme such as romance scams or crypto scams such as 'pig butchering'.

Beginning last summer, Match Group, Coinbase, and Meta initiated a first-of-its-kind collaboration in the tech industry to understand cross-platform threats, including pig butchering, and recognized an opportunity to better disrupt these crimes by bringing additional companies into the conversation. This cross-industry collaboration now spans online, social media and crypto companies, aiming to leverage each company's unique position in the ecosystem to better identify new adversarial trends and share best practices to combat global scams, and drive collective action to protect users.

"Scammers and the organized criminal groups behind pig butchering schemes target people across many internet services, making it hard for any one company to see the full picture of malicious activity and counting on each of us working in silos," said Guy Rosen, Chief Information Security Officer at Meta. "We hope that this coalition will serve as a force multiplier for security teams at tech companies to share threat insights and trends to enable more impactful disruptions of scam networks around the world."

"Fraud schemes are becoming increasingly sophisticated, underscoring a greater emphasis on the importance of industry leaders coming together to tackle fraud and secure a safer digital environment for users," said Philip Martin, Chief Security Officer at Coinbase. "We are dedicated to disrupting emerging online scams through collaboration, information sharing, and enhanced consumer education."

"As scams continue to become more convincing and intricate, bad actors are taking every opportunity to target and defraud innocent victims," said Devraj Varadhan, EVP of Engineering at Ripple. "We must fight back and educate individuals on how to protect themselves from these predators. There is no place for scammers, and we must come together across industries to address this pressing issue."

"People around the world lose hundreds of millions of dollars every month. Criminals are constantly adapting by leveraging and adopting new technology to scam on a global and massive scale, said Brian Bruce, Chief of Operations at Global Anti-Scam Organization. "As a result, we strongly believe that a multi-sector response with tech and financial companies is necessary to fight against this major transnational issue."

This new coalition will build on years of investment that these companies have independently made to help protect their users from scams, fraud, and other security risks. Going forward, the coalition will lead the creation of new work streams to identify best practices and guide how companies work together to help stop these scams and provide consumers with the tools and information needed to better protect themselves.

Together, the group is committed to continue working closely with law enforcement agencies around the world to continue sharing information with them to support investigations that combat online fraud and crimes. Nonetheless, it's important to say that it's encouraging to witness such initiatives, underscoring a collective dedication to user protection and the enhancement of digital security.

The increasing involvement of the crypto community in combating fraud reflects its potential for meaningful contributions beyond financial realms.