Keeping up with the multitudes of online scams – romance, investment, recruitment, impersonation and many more – has been an uphill task for governments, law enforcement agencies and the rest of us in society. — 123rf.com
THE threat of online scams is real, but not unique to Malaysians alone.
Official statistics show similar trends internationally: Americans lost US$10bil (RM 46.6bil) to online scams in 2022, compared to Australians A$3bil (RM9.2bil) and Singaporeans S$660mil (RM2.3bil) during the same period. Similarly, a study of Asia-Pacific countries found one in four consumers had been victims of online fraud (Experian, 2022).
Such rampant cybercrimes have raised concerns about an epidemic of scams – “scamdemic” – a term coined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Keeping up with the multitudes of online scams – romance, investment, recruitment, impersonation and many more – has been an uphill task for governments, law enforcement agencies and the rest of us in society.
Though online scams predate the social media age, technological advancements have allowed digital fraud to become more and more sophisticated, personalised and persuasive in recent years.
We have to remain on guard as online scammers have stepped up their game – online scams are not anymore confined merely to suspicious phishing emails or benefactors promising us a share of their inheritance (albeit, in exchange of us sending them money first!).
In contrast, scammers today want to get to know us better, profile our personalities and often play an emotional long game before making that ‘irresistible’ appeal for parting with our heard-earned money in the name of love or riches (or both).
“Scamdemic” scammers skilfully learn about our needs and wants to emotionally manipulate our unsuspecting minds. All this is taking place at a time when society has become increasingly vulnerable to online scams with the virtual world literally at our fingertips – in other words, smart phones making us more accessible to scammers.
We have seen a dangerous rise in more elaborate romance and investment scams in the virtual world since the pandemic, while scammers take advantage of our growing online presence, financial crunches and loneliness.
There is no doubt scammers have “upskilled” themselves to become more tech-savvy like the rest of society during the lockdown period. This has led to highly orchestrated online scams occurring in real time, often originating from so-called “scam parks” or “fraud factories” in foreign countries led by organised crime syndicates.
These online scammers have become so highly sophisticated technologically and psychologically to exploit our emotions, including trust, desires and fears, that they have have been able to defraud even the tech-savvy internet users.
