The insurance scam, be careful not to fall for it: you end up with an empty bank account

The data emerged from a survey conducted by the institutes mUp Research and Norstat for Facile.it they focus on the topic of insurance fraud and more.

In the last year, 1.4% of Italians (600 thousand people) have suffered an insurance scam for their car or motorbike. On average, they were subtracted 268 euros per year.

These are not insignificant numbers but, given that car / motorcycle TPL is considered one of the areas most at risk of fraud, Italians have fallen into the trap less than in other fields (electricity and gas utilities, mobile telephony, electronic cards).

Insurance scam and more: here is the survey data

In financial / insurance sectorhere is what the damage for each sector:

• Personal loans: on average, there is a fraud of 1,490 euros;
• Scams related to current accounts: 279 euros lost every year;
• Average scam relating to TPL cars / motorcycles: 268 euros per year.

What are the channels used by scammers to carry out fraud?

Mainly e-mail (45% of cases, including insurance scam), SMS (31% for current accounts) and scam websites (21.5% for electronic cards).

For fraud related to the electricity and gas utilities sector, the two most used channels are fake call centers (44%, also exploited for policies) and door-to-door (31.3%).

In particular, for personal loans, the new frontier is made up of social networks (15.9%) and instant messaging apps (9% of respondents are scammed).

Identikit of the victims of scams

According to the survey by Facile.it, the victims of scams are above all men (22.5% against 15.7% of women) and whoever answers has a university degree (23.3% against 17% of non-graduates).

Above all, they fall into the trap young people between 18 and 24 years old (31.6% versus 15% of 65-74 year olds) and residents in Northern Italy (North East 22.3% – North West 21%).

Do the scammed people report?

After suffering the scam, the victim does not report (41.5% on average, 55.1% for mobile telephony, 54.5% for personal loans).

It is not reported for various reasons:

• Negligible economic damage (33% of 3.4 million victims of scams);
• It is impossible to recover the amount lost (27%);
• I felt naive for having fallen into the trap (15.1% of 800 thousand people);
• Not wanting to let family, friends and acquaintances know that they have suffered fraud (9%).

What to do to avoid being scammed

To avoid scams it is essential to be attentive and vigilant, there are some particularities to which we must pay attention:

• be wary of all websites that offer a mobile phone number or chat or voice messaging as a contact person
• be wary of using chats on whatsapp, telegram, instagram and so on and so forth
• be wary of newly created websites or those that have a system that is still too simple and lean
• be wary of those who propose short-term policies
• be wary of policies that first ask you for your personal data or payment methods

Before choosing an insurance policy, we advise you to consult the IVASS portal and understand if the insurance company you want to rely on is registered or not in the register.

Our goal is always to warn you and protect consumers so always be careful and keep your eyes peeled.