News & Reviews:   scam

Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari yesterday revealed that a total of 5,091 online fraud cases were recorded in the state last year. Speaking at the Selangor Legislative Assembly (DUN), Amirudin said that the cases resulted in losses amounting to RM386,426,494.32.

Previously, we reported on the cheekily named Scammers On Hold AI (SOHAI) chatbot created by Malaysian entrepreneur and Replyr.ai founder Dylan Tan, an AI chatbot that targets scammers and infinitely wastes their time on WhatsApp. Well, it looks like scammers have struck back against SOHAI, as its account has been banned by WhatsApp.

The Malaysian founder and CEO of Singapore-based Replyr.ai, Dylan Tan, recently took to the Entrepreneurs and Startups in Malaysia Facebook group to share a new chatbot he created that is aimed at fighting scammers. An AI chatbot that will “infinitely waste scammers’ time on WhatsApp”, it’s hilariously named “Scammers On Hold AI” or “SOHAI”.

Love scam happens quite often in this digital world but this one takes the cake. It was reported that a French woman lost $850,000 (~RM3.8 million) to a Brad Pitt impersonator.

As Malaysians are being scammed nearly every day and public trust in our banking systems have plummeted, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) was recently reported as announcing that all Financial Institutions like Banks must bear the full responsibility for fraud or scams due to lapses in security. Read more here.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in Parliament today moots a new law to hold banks accountable for scam cases. Giving the current rules in the UK as an example, Anwar said that Malaysia should adopt the same principle by making banks compensate scam victims, if the banks were found to be negligent.

In Malaysia, it's common to get spam calls from unknown numbers pretending to be officials. If only there is something that can take care of that, right? Well, O2 by Virgin Media from the UK unveiled a new anti-fraud tool named Daisy.

Have you ever received an email threatening you to deposit a certain amount of money to avoid being exposed of surfing sites you shouldn't be or saying you've been hacked or worse? If you have, then you could be a victim of email spoofing.

Read on to understand more about email spoofing, whether or not you should worry about such blackmail/extortion emails and what you can do about it.

Another day in Malaysia and another Malaysian is scammed or cheated. Online scams alone have involved billions of ringgit lost or stolen and new AI tools are enabling scammers as well. Once lost or stolen, recovering said assets can be near impossible (unless you’re really lucky). So, it is better to not get scammed in the first place by being aware of all the possible scams that exist here in Malaysia.

In our opinion, knowing is half the battle won so we’ve listed our top 3 common scams here in Malaysia. In addition, there are already many official online resources such as the Latest Trending Commercial Crimes ebook from PDRM, the Financial Consumer Alert list from Bank Negara Malaysia and more. Read on to avoid being scammed in Malaysia.

One of the main reasons why Generative AI is such a game changer is that it enables people to do what they couldn’t do before. People who couldn’t draw or make music can now do that with just a line or two of text, code and even apps can be made in minutes and so forth. Unfortunately, this also applies to hackers and scammers as well, as generative AI is taking Cybersecurity threats to another level. Find out what to do about it here.