Would You Exchange Personal Information for a Coffee and Croissant?

Your name on your coffee makes your order feel personal. But what if, in the few moments it took to make your cappuccino, a coffee shop found out everything about you and wrote that on your cup too? 

That’s exactly what happens in a new short film created by BBH, ‘Data to Go’, which has launched online to raise awareness of identity fraud for Cifas, the UK’s leading fraud prevention service. 

This week Cifas released new figures showing a 52% rise in young identity fraud victims in the UK. In 2015, just under 24,000 (23,959) people aged 30 and under were victims of identity fraud. This is up from 15,766 in 2014, and is more than double the 11,000 victims in this age bracket in 2010. People of all ages can be at risk of identity fraud, but with growing numbers of young people falling victim, Cifas is calling for better education around fraud and financial crime.

Filmed in a London coffee shop, the online film uses hidden cameras to capture baffled reactions from people during a real stunt where their personal data, all found on public websites, is revealed to them live on a coffee cup.

With the promise of a free coffee and a croissant, participants were asked to ‘like’ the café’s Facebook page. A team of background researchers, within a maximum time period of three minutes, searched across public websites to find as much personal information and data as possible. That data was then radioed through to a barista, who wrote it on to a cup and handed it to the unsuspecting customer.  Hidden cameras captured their ‘baffled’ reactions and the film ends with the line ‘Don’t make it easy for fraudsters. Set your privacy settings’.

Fraudsters only need a few pieces of personal information to start to piece together someone’s identity and commit  crime with it. To make young adults think about what details they leave public, the campaign serves a stark reminder of how much information about them is easily accessible, all in the time it takes to make a coffee. The experiment’s goal is to firstly prompt young adults to update their privacy settings, and secondly, to learn about the dangers of inadvertently sharing too much about yourself and how else to protect your identity. 

The film is running online on Facebook and YouTube. Organisations such as City of London/Action Fraud, Get Safe Online, Santander, HMG’s Cyber Streetwise campaign, Financial Fraud Action UK, and Cifas members including Coventry Building Society, BT and Secure Trust Bank are all supporting the campaign and sharing the film across their social media networks. Cifas is also appealing to youth organisations, schools and universities to share the film so it reaches as many young people as possible.