Singapore scam victims lost less money on average this year compared with 2023: Global anti-scam alliance

However, Singapore’s Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling said the number of reported scams has continued increasing despite the country’s anti-scam safeguards and measures.
In the first half of 2024, there were more than 26,000 reported cases – up 16 per cent from the same period last year, she said at the Global Anti-Scam Summit Asia.
Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram were the platforms most frequently used by scammers during this period, making up half of all reported scam cases. 
Telegram, in particular, has emerged as “a platform of concern”, said Ms Sun. 
In the first six months this year, the number of scam cases reported on the popular messaging platform spiked by 137 per cent compared with the same period last year – higher than the percentage increase in scam cases reported on other platforms. 
Common scam types perpetrated on Telegram include investment scams and job scams.
Given that people are spending a lot of their time on social media platforms and messaging platforms, it comes as no surprise that scammers will exploit them there, said ASEAN cybersecurity leader at consulting firm EY Steve Lam.
Fraudsters operate like commercial businesses, he noted.
“Their behaviour … is not very different from what you would do if you were a legitimate business user. You get out there, you try to (reach out) to as many people as you can, get them to know about your products, get them interested, get them to connect with you,” he told CNA’s Singapore Tonight.
In Singapore, scammers connected with 40 per cent of their victims through social media, while 40 per cent of scams were performed via bank transfer, according to the GASA report. 
Many countries are just becoming aware that scams are a serious problem, said GASA managing director Jorij Abraham.
“But we see in many countries that the number of law enforcement officers fighting scammers is marginal compared to the number of reports, so we’re just at the beginning, where many countries have to do a major catch up,” he told CNA’s Syahida Othman on the sidelines of the anti-scam summit. 
He added that this is despite most people who get scammed not reporting it.
“They are unfortunately ashamed, but it’s a crime and it should be reported.”
As governments grapple with the burgeoning scam problem, artificial intelligence has been going some way in helping, said head of tech giant Google’s government affairs and public policy in Singapore Rachel Teo.
The firm puts in AI-powered defences to prevent scams from even reaching inboxes as much as possible, she told CNA. 
She gave the example of Gmail users. 
“Using AI-powered innovations, (we protect) 1.5 billion inboxes every single day, and that prevents 99.9 per cent of malware and phishing from even reaching a user’s inbox,” she said.
Ms Teo added that Google has also used AI to empower cybersecurity analysts.
“We’’ve seen, through our own research, that detection of malicious scripts can be improved by as much as 70 per cent through the use of AI and natural language prompts by cybersecurity analysts,” she said.
Giving another example, she said that a partnership with Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency resulted in a global pilot initiative that saw the downloading of risky apps being blocked.
To date, more than 1.2 million risky installation attempts and more than 17,000 unique risky apps have been blocked, she noted.
“All this (was) powered through AI. We would not be able to achieve this level of scale without the use of AI,” she said.
The experts said that despite the extent of the scam issues today, the situation is likely to improve. 
Stakeholders now know which parts of the scam process they can target, said Mr Joshua James, regional counter cybercrime coordinator for Southeast Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations.
“Scams overall might seem like they’re about the same, but I think (within the next year), the actual value of the scams per transaction will go down,” he said.
“I see not an eradication of the problem – I don’t think that’s ever going to be realistic – but I do see a decrease in how many people’s lives are affected every day because of it.”
Additional reporting by Alxis Thng.