Online scams escalate as e-commerce gains popularity

MANILA, Philippines — With more Filipinos nowadays feeling the economic pinch caused by the recent quarantines, scams of all forms have either been resuscitated or resurfaced in new forms.

It’s been awhile since someone sent me a text message asking me to return money, purportedly sent by mistake to my phone wallet. No matter how hackneyed and ancient this scheme, I presume it still manages to get a few victims to actually give a few hundred pesos “back” to the scammer.

Truly, desperate times breed desperate schemes. A remedy that seemed to have worked, even temporarily in the past, was to immediately report the number used by the scammer to your service provider. Don’t just ignore these attempts to scam you, but help prevent a possible new victim from getting duped.

The same treatment should be made for those who ask targeted mobile users to “replace” their old SIM cards in an attempt to steal personal information, including banking details and passwords. Immediately report such attempts to your service provider.

Illegal job recruitment

Another scam that had surfaced anew involves job recruitment and placement. Because of the lockdowns, illegal recruiters are taking advantage of the absence of legitimate recruiters who have temporarily closed their offices.

With job seekers desperate to find employment, a number of scammers have stepped up their criminal acts by posing to be legitimate recruitment agencies, and in the process asking for various fees to reserve job opportunities, attend seminars, and “rights” to job openings.

Illegal job recruiters have improved their game by seeking and reaching out to their victims through e-mails. By being able to get online identities of job seekers, they quickly act by sending job offers through e-mail letters. To the less discerning, these letters seem legitimate.

With many government offices running on a skeletal force, verifying the authenticity of recruitment agencies has become difficult. Reporting such dastardly attempts with the concerned government agencies is a good recourse, but the best way to thwart such evil efforts is to never let go of your hard-earned money, no matter how attractive the offer is.

The latter advice is also good for those who receive investment offers through e-mail or the internet. Remember also that attempts to entice you to invest in moneymaking deals with high returns are most probably bogus and too good to be true.

Because of restriction on people movement, pyramiding scams are using emails to reach out to potential victims. Beware.

Selling online

Nowadays, the most fashionable scamming crooks are those that purportedly sell online goods and services; some are already doing this even under the umbrella of big legitimate online stores like Amazon, Alibaba, Shopee, Lazada, and Zalora.

While vendors of big online outlets are asked to sign contracts that vouch for their integrity, a few bad eggs still fall through the cracks. Getting a refund for a defective or poor-quality product may be a standard operating procedure, but chasing your payment may become too tedious.

The worst online marketplace, however, is through social networks, the most famous being Facebook. Unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg and his team have not been able to extend any policing measures to those that misuse and abuse Facebook as a selling channel.

Still, Facebook is a savior for starting micro entrepreneurs and those self-employed who are trying to earn some decent money to get through the pandemic-induced quarantines. Online users will just have to be more cautious and discerning about trusting who they transact business with.

The coronavirus era has also spawned new channels for online transactions. Delivery services have expanded their portfolio, much the same way that Amazon did during its early years, to more products beyond food and beverages.

Small marts, wet market vendors, meat shops, drugstores, and even neighborhood hardware stores are being connected directly to households that opt to restrict their mobility and minimize exposure to the virus through such companies as Grab and Lalamove.

Tech integrity

So far, complaints have been confined to service quality, with incidents like late deliveries being the most common problem. As more people rely on expanded delivery services, new companies are cropping up to fill in the gap of existing ones. This is where government should come in to make sure that such newcomers operate on secure app platforms.

We’ve seen how Wirecard, which is similar to such payment platforms as Smart Money, GCash, or PayMaya, could be vulnerable to a lack of internal controls. To be feared more, though, would be big league hackers who could sabotage app systems.

If our big banks had experienced one or another form of destabilization in their online transaction platforms, what more can we expect of those smaller companies.

Need to be prudent

As the world is forced to move to more eCommerce because of the virus, keeping technology safe from hackers becomes even more important. On the government side, the Department of Trade and Industry is pushing for the creation of an eCommerce Bureau that will oversee regulation of this new sector.

While we wait for government to come up with an effective response, it will be up to us individually to be prudent in discerning the possible pitfalls of being more dependent on online transactions. Let’s all take care, not just of our health, but also our wallets.

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Should you wish to share any insights, write me at Link Edge, 25th Floor, 139 Corporate Center, Valero Street, Salcedo Village, 1227 Makati City. Or e-mail me at [email protected]. For a compilation of previous articles, visit www.BizlinksPhilippines.net.