Informing Of Young People About The Dangers Of Online Scams

Introduction

Background

Are you a victim of scam?

In our society today, with better and advanced technology, more and more people especially young adults use internet to communicate through social sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Wechat. However, it has benefits and dangers depend on how you use it. Unfortunately, love scams were took place in 2017 and 37 million dollars was lost. (Yusof, 2018)

In last few decades, love scam is one of the online scams which is seen to be likely to happen to mostly adults who like to seek relationships through dating apps or any types of social networking. Furthermore, another type of scam is malware tricks that make the online users click on the random link that pop up or send some odd emails in order to get connect to the computers and obtain the data in there. There are a lot of different kinds of scam which you are not aware of. Notably, there is an increase dramatically in online scams in Singapore which were cost millions of dollars.

Purpose & Scope

The aim of this report is to alert young people about the dangers of online scams. Besides that, we are also come up with a campaign that will cover on consequences of love scam and malware scam along aside with a creative poster.

Consequences

There is a term calls “catfish” which refers to those scammers, who uses fake profile information to trick online people and lure them to get things they want. Consequently, victims of love scams experienced significant emotional distress as well as financial losses. Furthermore, if it is a serious case, suicide also could happen when the victim cannot deal with the problems and decided to end their life at that point. A survey that collected from 80 respondents showed that many of those who had been scammed through online dating which they are only using for less than 4 weeks had parted with amounts of money ranging from $50 to $115,000. (Graff, 2015)

Talking about scammers, we cannot miss out one of the most dangerous one which is malware scam. The main dangerous consequence is that your computer and contents will belongs to someone else and they can use it to accomplish their purposes. This is because the malicious browser extensions is typically added when you download some free software such as movie or some application programs. You may not know that malware is being designed to run on your computer and then you are forced to pay for the ransom ware if you want to get it back. For example, malware can trick you through online advertisement like gang you giveaways (IPhone, a Laptop or something of high value) to trap your curiousness. No one can deny that it is not easy to take personal information of someone for the first time meet. Another consequence is your bank account is being stolen. Hackers will send you an email which is being fake from a bank account that requires you to enter, complete or verify your personal data regarding your accounts, credit cards and codes. This would be due to "security reasons", "file checks", "data loss" etc. You will log into your online bank account without hesitation therefore losing money would happen and it’s not liable for your bank return when it is your negligence. Besides that, Fraudsters infect computer clients with malicious software that allows criminals to spy on emails send between them and the contractor. The scammers then send a fake email to the victim from the alleged bidders with new counterfeit bank details. They will say that the first bank details they sent were wrong, or for an old bank account they were no longer using. (CHRISTIE, 2017). When payment is made, the money will quickly be withdrawn from the bank account of the scammers.

According to RBI data, “11,997 cases related to ATM, credit & debit cards as well as Net banking accounts were reported by banks in 2015-2016. Besides the 49,455 cyber security incidents, including phishing, scanning, malicious code, website intrusion.” (Dave, 2016) These figures just are a small part of the frauds in the India because some of them account unreported cases.

Campaign

A campaign, “Think Before You Click!” will be celebrated in 13 August, 2018 to raise awareness and also encourage people to take a stand against scammers. The target audience is young adults and teenagers who stick to their gadgets most of the time. The Guest-of-Honor will be Mr. Gary Chong, Prime Minister’s Office, Second Minister for Home Affairs and Trade and Industry. He will share everything about online scam (new kinds of scam, figures of people who were cheated, the amount of money these people lost, also some suggestion to avoid it). Besides, we will invite some people who used to be a victim of online scam to share about their story. Free training and awareness session (available online as well as in person) will be provided which teach everyone essential skills and confidence to identify and prevent scams. Everyone who join this talking show will have a chance to become a member of “Anti Online Scam” group which is launched by The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC).

This campaign aims:

• Prevent young adults and teenagers from becoming or continuing to be a victim of online scams.
• Will encourage the audience to be more aware
• Give some suggestion to stay away from it

Firstly, users of mobile messaging are advised to protect their personal information by using secure and strong passwords, which should be changed regularly, and install anti-virus software on their mobile or computer devices. Secondly, make sure you are in the trustworthy web page when doing online shopping and increase your alertness when provide your personal bank account information, credit card numbers to any free trial advertisements and promotions ; which can be persuaded from online and any messages from unknown numbers. In addition, check the item carefully before you buy, and always ask for more details to confirm its legitimacy. Do not be lured in by only the price of the product. There are a lot of ways to cheat money via online. Lastly, one need to beware of people who express strong feelings to you and use a loving words even before you have even met especially when using social media application such as Facebook, twitter and so on. “MS. Rosie (not her real name), 70, at a police press conference yesterday. She described how a man she met on Facebook had cheated her of $8,000. She nearly became a money mule too, but was warned in time by an officer from the Commercial Affairs Department.” (Wei, 2018)

Conclusion

To recapitulate, online scams bring many serious consequences which will affect your life. Hence, ones should know how to deal with online scams when it happens to oneself.