Phone call scams, SMS scams, email scams, etcetera. All this sounds familiar. These kinds of scams probably are as old as commercial telecommunications technology itself. Surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly, phone call scams are still at large. The modus operandi is usually the same or at least the resemblance is there. Incidentally, this resemblance also exists in, say, fishing, thus the term Phishing.
As you know, fishing is the act of laying out bait in the water to catch fish. Depending on the type of fish you want to catch, you will have to change your bait and the method of laying out the bait. Phishing is, just like fishing, the act of laying out bait to catch your target. Except, the target is mostly people with money.
The Phishing bait is usually a scenario to instil a false sense of insecurity in the victim by pretending to be some high-rank official from the bank or high-profile company informing about tax arrears and such. Ironically, some scammer even disguises themself as police officers to further frighten the victim and tell them to immediately take action.
They will try to confuse the victim by leading the call to multiple numbers or personnel making the situation look grave. Then along the way, they will ask the victims to either makes some payment or worse they ask for online banking information including the TAC for a transaction.
In actuality, whatever the problem is, no official will ask for your banking information or ask you to make transactions to some random account. They will instead ask you to refer to their nearby branch for a formal procedure.
To avoid being scammed, you have to first calm down and do not panic. Whatever the person at the other side of the call said, tell them you will take care of it some other time or that you have to check the validity of what they told you first. After that just cut the call and confirm the situation through the proper channels by contacting the official customer service or just directly deal with a branch office while ignoring their call.
That said, Malaysia is among the top 20 countries affected by spam calls and sms. Of this year alone, up until May 2021, 1,290 fraud cases have been reported to MCMC. While in PDRM records, there were 1,392 reported cases up until March 2021 with losses amounting to RM38,198,730.
We should all be more aware of the danger posed by such cyber threat and more careful about who we put our trust in. Especially so when it involves our important asset. Please look forward to our live stream where we will touch on the topics of cybersecurity.
