Severity Of Cyber Scams Crisis Of The Elderly
As Singapore moves towards becoming a Smart Nation, such heavy Internet dependence has corresponded to a rise in cyber scams. Sadly, more cases remain unreported due to embarrassment or ignorance, so the true escalation in cyber scams prevalence may far exceed what current statistics suggest.
A demographic particularly vulnerable to online scams is the elderly, as they are relatively less technologically savvy than other age groups. Coupled with their abundant retirement savings, and a tendency to be financially generous to strangers, the elderly are disproportionately targeted in online scams. This is congruous with a study by the Stanford Center on Longevity and the United States Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s Investor Education Foundation, which concluded that the elderly are both more likely to be targeted and to lose money in online scams.
Simultaneously, there is a rising trend of older Singaporeans using smartphones and the Internet regularly, where those above 50 clock the greatest year-on-year rise according to the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) Annual Survey on Infocomm Usage in Households 2014. In 2018, three quarters of those aged 50 to 59 and a third of those above 60 use the Internet regularly. Combined with their possible excess of leisure time to surf the Internet, the elderly is inevitably exposed to more cyber predation.
According to research by Barclays, a global investment bank and financial services corporate, scammed victims reported feeling stupid, victimised and gullible, and over half kept it from their social circle, while those that did felt judged, underscoring the deep psychological effects of scams on victims. Furthermore, elderly victims lose money from their retirement nest egg, breeding heightened insecurity and fear. Given such pronounced vulnerability, it is of utmost urgency for more to be done to secure Singapore’s elderly demographic from the dangers of lurking online scams.
Current Measures
- “Beware! Investment Scams” Campaign
- Unaddressed Gap: Unsustained Engagement
- Anti-Scam Public Education Campaign
- Unaddressed Gap: Undifferentiated Approach Towards Elderly
MoneySense and Securities Investors Association Singapore (SIAS) aim to raise awareness on how investment scams operate through a website, in which there were fake advertisements enticing the public to “invest”, only for them to realise it was an anti-scam effort.
Unfortunately, the campaign lacked sufficient measures to sustain the public’s interest, given that there was little publicity, and the fake advertisements were only a one-off measure. Given this lack of continuity, it is unlikely that they were effective in truly inculcating critical thinking and digital media literacy in the public consciousness.
This campaign by National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) and Singapore Police Force (SPF) aims to inform the public about various scam types and how they can guard themselves against each kind. The campaign comprises a website with posters, a television commercial and roadshows.
Despite the range of publicity platforms, little was customised specifically for the elderly. Most roadshows and resources are only in English, but only about a third of elderly is English literate, acutely limiting their access and understanding. Resources also do not cater to elderly’s preferred learning style (peer learning), making them less impactful and effective to their learning.
Desired Outcomes
We hope to impart critical thinking skills and digital media literacy skills, and promote cyber scam awareness to the elderly specifically, in view of their particular vulnerability to dangerous cyber scams.
Overview of our Success Model
The National Steps Challenge by Health Promotion Board (HPB) promotes physical activity amongst Singaporeans. It has wrapped up three challenge seasons to tremendous response, drawing over 500, 000 participants, well over the target of 400, 000, demonstrating its sheer success and scale.
This success model is well-aligned with our project, as both aim to inculcate long term behavioural changes in the respective target groups. While this model aims to make the healthy living a lifetime habit, our project seeks to imbue digital media literacy skills in the elderly so they can proactively guard themselves against online scams.
The campaign utilises the Healthy 365 smartphone application, which features dashboards so users can easily track statistics. Myriad of food items to add to daily food journal for easy calorie countingIt incorporates a reward system for users to accumulate points with steps and redeem them for rewards. Such incentives motivate participants to stick by their health goal for a longer term, and boost engagement levels.
The Corporate Challenge allows employees to compare their organisation’s ranking on the dashboard, spurring participation levels. Similarly, we can create a smartphone application that features dashboards, for users to easily refer to data, an informative section for current scams, a reward section to incentivise users and a social community for mutual motivation. These features can be presented to the elderly in a simple and elderly-friendly way to encourage their long-term engagement with the app, enabling the elderly to hone their digital media literacy skills effectively.
