Draft 2
Have you received any scam calls or been approach by anyone online with the promise for love or sex in exchange for money or gift cards? People fall victim to scams for many reasons, for example, their desires for the things they want, believing in things too good to be true and falling for trickery. The perpetrators take advantage for their victim’s desires and technology by assuming identities of government bodies, delivery companies or even banks, some examples are the Singapore Police Force, DHL and OCBC bank. These perpetrators have taken to spoofing and masking their caller IDs to masquerade as the police. Those callers impersonating banks would often ask for personal information including names, identification numbers and banking details such as account numbers and credit card details. These scammers also convince their victim to send them money or credits in exchange for love or sex. In order to reduce scams, it is important for the government to spread awareness and educate the public.

Cyber scams are probably one of the most prevalent crimes in Singapore. Such crime increase most rapidly, with an increase of 55.3% over the previous year. In the first half of 2016, there were 3,893 of such cases were recorded a huge increase from 2,506 in the same period in year 2015 (Lim, 2015). The two main type of scams are internet love scam and phone scams. Most of the scams are internet love scams, with victims mostly being female Chinese Facebook users between 30 and 59 in PMET (Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians) positions. They would ask for gift cards in promise of a date or sexual services that would never materialise. Between January 2016 and April 2016, there were more than 190 police reports of Internet love scams, amounting to S$7.5 million, nearing the figure for the entire year of 2014, which involved 198 cases for S$8.8 million (Fai, 2016). The second most common scam are phone scams, with S$4 million lost between January to April this year with 50 cases. The scammers assume the identity of various organisation asking for personal information including names, identification numbers and banking details such as account numbers and credit card details. In some cases, they impersonate China officials asking their victims to transfer a sum of money to an offshore account, to bribe them for catching them in the act of shipping illegal goods via DHL. The victims are often the users of infocomm technology and mobile phones. These perpetrators tend to instil fear and exploit their targets’ ignorance in order to scam them. Besides the loss of money and identity theft, the victims who have been scammed will be scarred for life. They would have greater fear and less trust in technology which facilitated in the crime they were targets of. While the number of scams involving infocomm technology have been on the rise, it is possible to lower these figures by raising public awareness.

While the government have adopted public awareness programmes as a measure, these are insufficient against the scams faced in Singapore. Firstly, the police have been holding roadshows to raise public awareness. These roadshows are usually located in the heartlands and neighbourhood near bus and train interchange where there is higher volume of human traffic.  Although there is high foot traffic, only a minority pay attention to these road shows as they would usually be heading home or running an errand. Secondly, the Singapore Police Force have also embrace the use of technology in their outreach. The police post and update on their Facebook page whenever there are information for the public or warnings against crimes. While the internet allows the spread of information at a fast rate, the information would only reach the eyes of a small percentage of users. Thirdly, a novel way of educating the public of scams and things that are too be to be true. The police placed a vending machine selling a power bank and cable just for a dollar, when ‘victims’ paid, the machine would dispense a box containing a note advising them not to fall for crimes (2016, Nurul). Despite its initial success, this experiment by the police have only be conducted on a small scale, and it has not been tested on a larger scale across the nation. This experiment the police of ‘cheating’ the public probably one of the effective way of raising awareness. News reporting is also one of the most effective ways of raising awareness in the public, however it is only possible when a large number of people have fell victims to the scams. This may prevent more crimes from happening but it does not deter the first occurrence of the crime.

As cybercrimes are conducted over the Internet, perpetrators can operate across the continent, making arrest near impossible. While the passing of international laws to prosecute such criminals would definitely serve as a deterrence and reduce the number of scams in the world, it would also require the cooperation of countries involved. Crimes are impossible to put to a stop, and we can only deter criminals and educate the public not to fall victim.

References:
Fai, L. K., Channel News Asia (2016). Scams Exploiting Infocomm Tech on the Rise in Singapore: Police. Retrieved September 18, 2016, from http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/scams-exploiting-infocomm/2872234.html
Lim, Y. H., The Straits Times (2015). Overall crime rate in Singapore up 6.7% in the first half of 2015. Retrieved Sept 20, 2016, from http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/overall-crime-rate-in-singapore-up-67-in-the-first-half-of-2015
Nurul, A. Y., The New Paper (2016). When cops ‘cheat’ people for a good cause. Retrieved Sept 28, 2016, from http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore-news/when-cops-cheat-people-good-cause