City under siege from scammers

Stacy Shi

More than 90 percent of Hongkongers have encountered suspected scams and one-third of them said they or their friends and families fell victim to scams, a survey conducted by Sing Tao Daily in conjunction with police found.

This comes as the police Scameter app has recorded 570,000 downloads and 4.8 million searches, with more than 170,000 suspicious calls and 15,000 suspicious websites reported as of early this month.

The online survey between August 30 and September 9 polled 10,006 people, 43 percent of whom indicated that they had encountered suspected fraud on six or more occasions, while 10 percent reported 20 times or more in the past month.

Fraudulent phone calls were the most common type of scams at 39 percen, followed by emails at 23 percent and online shopping scams at 10 percent.

Nearly four-fifths of the respondents said they could recognize a scam once they receive suspicious messages, while 10 percent said they learned about it only after being alerted by the Scameter application.

However, 8 percent said they realized they were being scammed only when a monetary transfer was requested.

In addition, one-third of the respondents said that they or their relatives or friends had fallen prey to fraud, with more than 80 percent of them having lost HK$100,000 or less, while 1.6 percent had lost more than HK$1 million.

The survey also revealed that those with a bachelor's degree and earning over HK$30,000 per month reported that they or someone they knew had been scammed. This ties in with police findings that many victims of fraud cases are highly educated, professionals and university professors.

In July, a 74-year-old accountant received a phone call purportedly from a mainland telecommunications company, alleging that he was involved in a criminal case in Beijing.

The phone call was transferred to a scammer posing as a mainland police officer subsequently, and the victim followed the scammer's request to provide his bank account information including his login password, resulting in a loss of HK$16 million.

Police said 19,897 fraud cases were recorded in the first half of this year, up 6.2 percent on the same period last year, with losses amounting to HK$4.48 billion, of which 62.3 percent were related to online scams.

"The three most common types of scam in Hong Kong are online shopping and online investment scams and cases involving those impersonating customer services," said chief inspector Felton Leung Yee-tak of the police Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau.

The number of losses in online shopping scams increased significantly in the first half of the year, Leung said.

Scammers would pose as sellers and make use of high-demand items to attract customers, and then disappear after receiving payments.

Police also detected a fake pizza shop website on Google Play earlier this year.

Leung reminded members of the public to be cautious when providing personal information or making remittances, and to check credibility from multiple sources.

The Scameter is a powerful and reliable fact-checking tool, Leung added.

The survey also revealed that 46 percent of the respondents have been using the Scameter.

Nearly 90 percent of the users considered the app as helpful in preventing fraud, with "Call Alert" and risk assessment of fraud and cyber security being regarded as most effective.

Leung said the app can identify suspicious calls and websites, and will automatically generate an alert when members of the public receive a suspicious call or enter a phishing link.

"In addition, the police will update the information of fraudsters daily according to the information of reported cases, and the app also provides a platform for the public to report fraud cases, which will be analyzed by the system and incorporated into the app's database if verified," he said.