In recent times, a lot of people here in the Philippines got cheated by a scammer over their huge purchases of tickets for a Taylor Swift in Singapore. This incident serves as a painful reminder that the nation has been hit by a lot of scams online, so much so the Nikkei Asia published a December 2023 article describing the Philippines as “Asia’s epicenter for online shopping scams.”
To put things in perspective, posted below is an excerpt from the Nikkei Asia article. Some parts in boldface…
James Relativo thought he had landed a great deal on an electric drum set, but instead the Manila resident was cheated out of his money in a country gaining the dubious distinction as Asia’s worst for online sales scams.
Shoppers across the Philippines have been bilked out of millions of dollars so far this year, with some turning to victim chat groups on Facebook and other social media. A recent report found more than one-third of Filipinos surveyed had been scammed or encountered retail fraud online.
“Some people easily believe in false promises even if they are too good to be true,” warned Alexander Ramos, executive director of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC).
In retrospect, Relativo might have been more skeptical about a drum set going for 8,000 pesos ($140), less than half the usual price, on e-commerce site Shopee.
But he hit ‘buy’ without hesitating, and soon things turned suspicious. The seller shifted its communications to a messaging app and demanded half the cost of the drums for “refundable taxes.”
More money demands followed until a frustrated Relativo agreed to bypass Shopee’s payment system and settle his remaining balance on GCash, a digital payments platform. He never got his drums.
“I just kept telling him I wanted my money back,” Relativo told Nikkei Asia, his voice laced with exasperation. “It wasn’t like I was dealing with a scammer — he was talking to me, sending me pictures of the drum set being packed.“
The journalist’s saga highlights a bitter experience for a growing number of people in the Philippines, which clocked the highest scam rate for online shoppers across nearly a dozen economies in the 2023 Asia Scam Report, published in November.
Commissioned by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) and Taiwan-based tech security company Gogolook, the report surveyed 20,000 respondents about their online shopping experiences in Vietnam, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
The shopping scam rate in the Philippines led the group at an eye-watering 35.9%, followed by mainland China at 27.2%. South Korea had the lowest incidence, at 4.2%.
The explosion in online shopping has created a lucrative market for scammers. And a lack of cybercrime awareness is aggravating the problem in the Philippines, where people spend an average of 10 hours a day online by some estimates.
“Although (Filipinos) are considered very connected and digitally wired, (they) do not have adequate digital literacy skills,” said Mark Manantan, director of cybersecurity and critical technologies at the Pacific Forum in Hawaii.
The survey found that Filipinos were easy prey for scammers because they “respond too quickly” to sellers’ demands.
Let me end this piece by asking you readers: What is your reaction about this recent development? Do you think Nikkei Asia’s article is detailed enough and trustworthy when it comes to gaining a strong awareness about online scams? How members of your household or your local community got scammed online over the past six months? Why do you think a lot of people in the Philippines are so determined to spend a lot of money to watch a Taylor Swift event overseas?
You may answer in the comments below. If you prefer to answer privately, you may do so by sending me a direct message online.
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