OFFICIALS from the US have come to North Yorkshire to learn about its trading standards team's ground breaking work to crack online scams and misleading information online.

America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) visited the National Trading Standards eCrime Team (NTSECT) based at North Yorkshire County Council and City of York Council to see the work being done on technical support scams, subscription traps, and copycat website issues which blight English-speaking consumers on both side of the Atlantic.

The FTC is the US government civil enforcement agency that promotes and enforces consumer protection and fairer trading for businesses - similar to Trading Standards in the UK.

“I am delighted our national team got the opportunity to explain their work first-hand to the FTC visitors” said Councillor Chris Metcalfe, North Yorkshire County Council’s executive member for trading standards.

“They’ll now have the opportunity to work with them so we can both take action against online scams and misleading online advertising.

“We are already working with Facebook and Google on the issue of misleading adverts, and the added influence of the Federal Trade Commission will benefit consumers in both countries.”

The FTC’s officers - Stacy Feuer, assistant director for International Consumer Protection and Sara DePaul, counsel for International Consumer Protection - were keen to see how intelligence could be shared.

The National eCrimes Team has been at the forefront of tackling online scams in the UK and has secured the only conviction of a tech support scammer to-date.

Technical support scams result in consumers being called and told they have a problem with their computer; with the callers often claiming to be Microsoft certified.

Copycat websites pass themselves off as official government sites, charging premium prices for government services, and subscription traps entice consumers with ‘free’ trial offers that land them with costly monthly payments that are difficult to stop.

Mike Andrews, National Coordinator for the National Trading Standards eCrime Team, said:

“The UK and US are highly lucrative targets for international scammers because we have some of the biggest numbers of internet users in the world.

“The tech support scam has defrauded consumers in English-speaking countries like the UK, US, Canada and Australia since 2008, so it makes sense to work with our US counterparts and tackle some of our most virulent scams.

“Working alongside an organisation as diligent and committed as our own to detecting and stopping the people behind these scams will give our work a huge boost”.