Fake friends, fake tickets, fake emails: S’poreans share their encounters with scams & how to avoid falling prey

“I won’t fall victim to it, I’m sure.”

That’s what I’d like to think when it comes to the plethora of scams that plague the digital world these days.

As a digital native, I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to things like that.

For example, I always check reviews for an online shop before making a purchase, especially if they are selling something at a bargain.

For a while, I had the impression that older folks were more susceptible to scammers.

That is, until I heard about how youngins had also fallen victim to e-commerce scams, like for Taylor Swift tickets.

And it wasn’t only this reader who fell for the sly tricks of scammers.

According to the Singapore Police Force, over 22,339 scams were reported in the first half of 2023, with e-commerce scams, fake friend call scams and phishing scams being among the top five scams.

But these are just statistics.

To hear personal encounters with scammers, I reached out to our audience on Instagram.

Here’s what some of them shared.

Too good of a friend

What has come to be known as the “fake friend” scam call was one of the more commonly encountered scam variants.

This user wasn’t the only one. Another Instagram user shared that their father received a similar call, but avoided financial losses due to a good amount of vigilance.

Fake concert tickets

If you thought scalpers were morally dubious, wait till you hear about scalpers who aren’t even honest about scalping.

In 2023, there was a rush to buy concert tickets to see the likes of Taylor Swift and Coldplay perform in Singapore in 2024.

With that rush, some excited fans unfortunately fell into the trap of those with ill intent.

Just like this Mothership reader who wrote in, an Instagram user also fell prey to a dishonest online seller.

Three attempts to “chase” the seller for the tickets proved futile.

Hacked e-payments account?

Ever been asked to give up your password to save your money from being hacked?

When it comes to your hard-earned savings, it’s only natural to panic when you are told that they are at risk.

Deleting my Facebook account?

Personally, it is in my workplace email inbox where I encounter more creative scam attempts in the form of phishing emails.

For example, take this email threatening to delete my social media account.

The first thing that raised a red flag was the email address.

A huge company like Meta would use a custom email domain, rather than sticking with the default ‘Outlook.com’.

The next thing that raised eyebrows was the misplaced comma in the greeting line.

Instead of ‘Dear (my name),’ the greeting went ‘Dear, (my name)’.

Next would be the contradicting email subject and content.

While my account “has been erased”, the email body tells me that my account “will be erased” unless I click “verify”.

On top of all that, the email is a ‘final warning’, intentionally trying to create alarm and a false sense of urgency.

No thanks!

One in three fell victim to cyber incident in 2022

According to results from the Cybersecurity Public Awareness Survey commissioned by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), one in three respondents indicated that they fell victim to cyber incidents in 2022.

The number of respondents who felt that they might fall victim to online scams also increased.

Nine in 10 respondents indicated that they have come across phishing messages, and most of them were confident they could identify them.

Age-wise, the older the respondents, the more likely they were to think that they would fall victim to various cyber incidents.

However, in reality, younger respondents (aged 15 to 39 years old) were more likely to fall victim to cyber victims than older respondents (aged 40 years old and above).

When it comes to phishing emails – a common trick which scammers employ to get you to divulge your personal data – 1 in 4 respondents were unable to identify them.

Protect your digital ‘house’

According to statistics from the Singapore Police Force, those aged 20 to 39 made up 50.8 per cent of the total number of scam victims from January to June 2023.

They fell prey to job scams, e-commerce scams and phishing scams.

Those aged 40 to 59 made up 32.1 per cent of total scam victims in the same period, falling prey to fake friend scam calls, e-commerce scams and job scams.

The elderly, aged 60 and above, made up 11.7 per cent of victims, with 40.7 of elderly victims falling for fake friend scam calls.

Moral of the story? Just because you’re young, it doesn’t mean you’re impervious to scams.

At the same time, “fake friend” calls and scamming scalpers are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to scam variants.

Between January and June 2023, victims lost S$97 million to investment scams, S$79.4 million to job scams, S$12.6 million to fake friend call scams and S$7.43 million to e-commerce scams.

S$7.4 million was lost to phishing scams.

To protect yourself from the multi-varied nature of scams and cyber incidents, users can start by adopting four basic practices:

• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) and use strong passphrases
• Beware of phishing scams
• Update software promptly
• Use anti-virus apps

You can also download apps like ScamShield to help guard against unwanted calls or messages and CSA’s recommended security apps to protect against mobile security threats like malware and phishing

With so much of our lives now online, it’s good to be vigilant about the valuable things we access in the digital space, such as our money.

These days, scammers are adept at coming up with ways to get their hands on your digital valuables.

To protect yourself from unnecessary losses, it’ll be good to keep a watchful eye over them and put them under multiple layers of protection.

This sponsored article made the writer download ScamShield and a security app on his phone.

Top image via Unsplash