Article #6: Online Shopping: The Scamming 'Love Bites'
We all love to shop, don’t we? The word shopping itself is stimulating and mood-lifting for many of us. Try to recall what comes across our mind when we think of mega sales in a shopping mall prior to the pandemic? Most likely images of people jostling and elbowing through rushing to grab sales items like a hungry hunter hunting for their preys appear in our mind. This goes to show that the majority of us tend to begin our shopping spree in an off-guard mode, be it against overspending, poor quality of items, or impulse, which make us easy targets for unethical sellers or scammers.
With the movement control order (MCO) being imposed in Malaysia since March 2020, and MCO 2.0 still ongoing in some states in Malaysia at the time of writing, we invariably turn to online shopping more than ever before. The pandemic coupled with the government’s push towards a digital economy have accelerated the shift from shopping in a mall to shopping online. On one hand, we are glad that we can continue to shop for things that we need but on the other hand, cyber scam rates are rising exponentially, unfortunately. It is mind boggling to think that Malaysians lose an average of RM100,000 a day to cyber scammers with each case averaging RM6,200, involving a total of RM35,882,385 behind the 70% spike in online shopping fraud cases compared to last year (Kong, 2020). This sends a blaring alarm to everyone that we must be more vigilant when we are shopping, particularly when doing so online.
Regardless of the products or value of our purchases (even if it is less than RM10), the tactics used by scammers keep evolving. Sometimes scammers would appear legitimate by asking shoppers to remit half of the purchase price and only pay the balance upon delivery; some market their products with ‘too-good-to-be-true’ irresistible enticement luring us into believing that we have stumbled upon a treasure that has fallen from the sky. Others steal our online footprints and attempt to panic us into calling them, thus opening the door for them to trap us by either making us part with our money or disclose our confidential banking details to them; the list goes on and does not seem to end. These scammers are among the most religious practitioners of “if there is a will, there is a way; let nothing stop us”; they have proven themselves unstoppable and run the most profitable ‘business’ in the world, albeit unethical and immoral.
Not too long ago, a student became a victim of an online scam, accusing her of being part of the supply chain involving an illegal parcel withheld at customs and asked her for payments. Although the case was reported to the police, there was no way to recoup the money lost. Recently, few days after having my online purchase placed, I received an email informing that I have an overseas parcel at the customs which required a payment of RM6.99 to get clearance. I was given a number to call. This email came during Chinese New Year (CNY) while I was anxiously waiting for all my purchases and attending to all the chores I needed to get done before the festival. In this situation, since the amount was negligible, guess what was my first reaction? I picked up the phone and started calling after confirming that the status of my parcel was indeed ‘pending for customs clearance’ and seem to match perfectly with the message in the email. I was lucky that the line was engaged! Sadly, this also meant that a lot more people (who were on the line) were at the merciless claws of the scammers. The supposed ‘oxspicious’ CNY could well turn into one of the most regrettable lifetime moments for anyone who may have fallen victim to these unscrupulous talents.
The blessing from not getting through when I called gave me the window to think and check more carefully. I was then convinced that it was yet another scam. There are a few things that we can do to check the validity of suspicious emails: we can go back to the online platform and enquire, read the scam alert, look out for the sender’s email address, website domain name, email content, phone number of the requestor, spelling errors, inconsistent capitalisation of letters, grammar mistakes, etc. At a glance, everything will always look legitimate, but we will find flaws once we slow down and look at more details. Most importantly, we must NEVER share any One Time Passwords that we may receive.
My sincere intention of writing this is to create greater awareness especially among students and hopefully, as much as we love to shop online, we can prevent ourselves from getting the scammers’ ‘love bites’. It is worth noting that in the context of Malaysia, Facebook is the first choice for online scammers, followed by Mudah.my, Instagram, WhatsApp and Shopee, according to a report in 2020 (Kong, 2020). So, let us truly enjoy the convenience and benefits of online shopping and avoid the love bites of the ever-ready predating scammers.
ReferenceKong, S. H. (2020). ‘
Malaysians lose RM100,000 a day to online shopping cheats’. The Sun Daily. 28 December 2020. Available
here (Accessed 28 February 2021).
Contributed by Mandy Sim