New fraud emerges on online rental group chat
發佈日期: 2025-08-30 23:46
TVB News
In the first half of this year, the police reported over 2,200 online investment fraud cases involving 1.5 billion dollars. This represents a 40 percent surge from last year.
A new trend is that victims were defrauded though interactions via online rental platforms.
Despite regular police anti-fraud warnings, many people still fall victim to scams.
From January to June this year, police reported more than 16,000 technology fraud cases, similar to that of last year.
However, the amount of losses rose nearly 15 percent to 3 billion dollars, and half of the cases were related to online investment.
The number of online scam cases rose 25 percent.
Recently, scammers were found to be preying on online rental group chats.
In one case, a 52-year-old woman had a unit to rent out last November and the scammer pretended to show interest. After learning she was recently divorced, he forged a relationship, luring her to fall in love with him.
He told her that he had information about Hong Kong and U.S. Stocks.
Within four months, the victim lost 31 million dollars.
LEUNG OI-LAM, Senior Superintendent of Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau: "Usually they will just pretend or they will have some script that fit what the victims need. Actually they just want to start a conversation with the victims."
Leung said whether pretending to have high income or claiming they are investment experts, scammers use various methods to add the victims into a rental group chat, through which personal information is revealed.
In order to counter tech crimes, citizens can protect themselves by refusing to allow strangers adding them into group chats.
Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, recently launched a new function called "safety overview". When users are being added to groups by people outside of their contacts, there is "pop-up" notice to warn them. Meta is also using AI to detect fraud group chats and fake accounts.
MAGGIE TAM, Head of Public Policy, Hong Kong Meta: "We have our own system and our AI machine learning as well as the detection to understand a bit more about the behavior of the actors as well as the content trend."
During the past six months, 6.8 million Whatsapp accounts related to Southeast Asian fraud gangs were locked, and 157 million fraud advertisements were removed.
However, because of the encrypted communication, users still play an important role in countering fraud and scams.
Meta said if users alert them about suspected fraud messages, they will monitor the case and take appropriate action.
Meanwhile, the Investor and Financial Education Council has launched online anti-fraud tests and role-play games to help the public improve their alertness.
The Investor and Financial Education Council also said they will enhance the cooperation with NGOs and local communities to strengthen the anti-fraud education and publicity for the elderly.
