Even scam experts fall for ‘quishing’ trap at global anti-fraud event in Singapore

SINGAPORE: At the summit of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) in Singapore earlier this week, it became painfully obvious how easily people can fall for a scam, even those who are trained experts in the field.

According to an article in The Financial Times, over 50 attendees scanned a QR code that was supposed to give them the opportunity to get ahead of a queue. The mock scam had been put into place by the organisers of the summit, with the purpose of raising awareness of “quishing attacks.” With these phishing attacks, scammers make use of QR codes to deceive victims into exposing their personal data to malicious websites.

The fact that dozens of participants inadvertently fell for the scheme underlined the fact that anyone and everyone can be scammed, the managing director of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, Jorij Abraham, said at the summit.

He did, however, reassure everyone that their mobile phones were not infected with malware and that their financial details had not been compromised.

As vulnerable as everyone is, people living in Southeast Asia are particularly so, and Meta’s director of public policy for the region, Rafael Frankel, characterised Southeast Asia as ground zero for scams. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, which has been fraudsters’ social media platform of choice. Mr Frankel added that Meta has been working with Thai authorities to shut down scam compounds in Myanmar.

The GASA said at the summit that cybercriminals now steal an eye-watering US$1 trillion (S$1.28 trillion) from their victims around the world every year. Many of the scams are concentrated at industrial scam centres in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, where trafficked employees numbering in the hundreds are working. Authorities in the United States now believe that as much as two-thirds of the scam losses in that country are due to such centres.

Senior foreign affairs officer at the US state department, Matthew Killian, was quoted in the FT piece as saying that fraudsters at scam centres are the most diverse set he’s seen, “using a combination of crypto, investment fraud, romance scams, AI and call centres.”

Singapore police, meanwhile, have said that scams went up by 70 per cent last year, and according to a survey of 6,000 people in Southeast Asia conducted by GASA, within a span of six months, 63 per cent of consumers were targeted by scams, with the most common channels being phone, text, or social media.

What has caused scam attacks to level up is generative AI, which has enabled the technology to make attacks more targeted and personal. Fraudsters not only collect information about their victims, but they also use deepfake technology to convince them to part with their money.

“If you are not being scammed yet, it’s because you haven’t encountered a scam designed just for you and only for you,” said Jeff Kuo, the chief executive of Gogolook, a fraud prevention company in Taiwan. /TISG

Read also: Singaporeans Hit Hardest by Global Scams, Losing Over US$4,000 Per Victim