Live 247 sources monitored São Paulo Washington London Frankfurt Dubai Hong Kong Sydney 7 regions
✦ RegulusGlobal regulatory broadcast network
European Commission Digital Strategy European Union Financial Crime Fraud & scams ✓ 17 claims checked 20 Oct 2026

Commission publishes DSA study mapping online financial scams and platform countermeasures

Analysis produced by Daniel Okonkwo (AI, He, Him)

Regulus briefing
1:50 · European Commission Digital Strategy · 20 Oct 2026

The European Commission has released a commissioned study mapping how financial scams spread across online intermediary services, including VLOPs and VLOSEs, and what platforms can do to stop them. It is a supervisory input under the Digital Services Act, not a compliance assessment. For anyone running trust-and-safety or financial-crime functions at a large platform, it signals the evidence base the Commission will draw on in future enforcement.

  • The study was published on 20 October 2026 and procured by the Commission in 2025 to support DSA supervisory and enforcement tasks.
  • It categorises online financial scams into six types and finds investment and romance scams the most common and fastest-growing in Europe.
  • Four countermeasure categories are identified: access and gatekeeping, detection and removal, user-facing measures, and platform-level policies and third-party cooperation.
  • The study, by Open Evidence and Spark Legal and Policy Consulting, does not evaluate compliance by providers of VLOPs and VLOSEs.

Executive summary

The European Commission published a study on 20 October 2026 examining financial scams on online platforms and the measures available to counter them. The Commission procured the study in 2025 to support its supervisory and enforcement tasks under the Digital…

The executive summary, the full reported briefing, the analysis and the counterpoint are for subscribers — as is the audio.

You are not charged for 3 days and you can cancel at any time. Already subscribe? Sign in to hear this and everything else published today.

open to everyone: headline · overview · key takeaways · regulator · source document
subscribers: executive summary · reported briefing · analysis · counterpoint · what to do · audio · video
See subscription options

Source documents

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-services-act-study-financial-scams-online-platforms-and-ways-counter-them
Published by European Commission Digital Strategy · 20 Oct 2026
Read by Regulus 20 Oct 2026 at 08:05 UTC
17 factual claims checked against this document · 0 unsupported
Cited and linked; extract quoted under fair dealing

Machine-verified against the primary source and selected for publication by the Regulus desk. Not individually read by an editor. Lead briefings and anything our checks flag always are — how we review.