GCG Asia Scam Finder Archives

The 8 Most Common Scams in Malaysia and Singapore - GCG Asia

Scams Are Rising at A Rapid Rate. GCG Asia Investigates the Dangers of Scams and How to Protect Against It

May 11, 2021

by Melissa Tan GCG Asia Scam Finder

Scamming is a form of a deceitful, dishonest act performed usually by a business or an individual. It is basically taking advantage of trusting individuals. There are plenty of different scamming techniques out there, which can be anything from promising a certain amount of goods or service that they never supply, or simply sending a fake SMS in an attempt to acquire your personal information. Those SMSes are mass-marketed, meaning one scammer sends it to several numbers in different countries.

More than half of the scams happening worldwide involve encouraging individuals to invest heavy sums and promising high returns without any financial risk. With many scams being online-based scams, aided by modern technology, they are constantly evolving! GCG Asia Latest News explains.

“Due to the current pandemic, a whole new set of scams related to Covid-19 are all over the Internet. Unfortunately, many have already fallen for it. Due to the variety and number of scams out there, it’s usually difficult to trace the scammer, most of them are quite experienced in hiding their tracks.” says GCG Asia CEO and Founder Eddy Teow.

Scammers constantly invent new convincing and seemingly legitimate reasons to ask for pre-payments such as to cover the processing fees or taxes.

In order to avoid scams, you need to familiarize yourself with the most common repetitive types of scams. The GCG Asia Scam Finder development team sheds the light on competition scams. Competition scams usually involve a variety of text messages or emails from an overseas lottery company. The content of the message usually claims you’ve won a certain prize, and they are simply waiting for you to provide them with your bank information so they can transfer the award money. This type of scam may be considered outdated, but it still happens.

Hacking is usually done by a scammer through phishing emails. Those emails trick you into giving them access to your personal device. The email attachment usually includes a link that is very tempting to view. Once you click the link a malicious software will be installed giving the hacker remote access to the content of your device. From there they can scan your device for personal information such as your online bank login details. So, avoid opening emails from unknown senders, and also having protective software such as the upcoming GCG Asia Scam Finder can help you protect your data.

Being aware of the types of scam that are affecting every day Malaysians and Singaporeans.

GCG Asia Malaysia and Singapore are most concerned to read the increasing reports of Malaysians being among the most vulnerable to scams. Every Malaysian has encountered a type of scam in the past or knows someone that has been scammed. With the Covid-19 pandemic’s Movement Control Order in Malaysia, scammers moved their operations to the internet. Scams have reportedly increased 82.5% in Malaysia in less than one year during Covid-19 times. According to local officials between January 2020 to September 2020, 4,764 Macau scams have occurred incurring losses of more than RM200 million.

Here are the most common types of scam that are constantly happening in Malaysia and Singapore according to GCG Asia:

PPE (personal protective equipment) fraud

GCG Asia analyst Ben Foo warns us that unfortunately unscrupulous people are taking advantage of the current state of the world. “Covid-19 has affected every household and yet scammers find a way to make it worse. There have been hundreds of reported cases involving face mask scams where the purchaser never receives any face masks some including RM600,000 worth of masks. Other fraudsters promoted drugs that falsely claim to heal the coronavirus infection,” he said.

Illegal money lending activities

There have been many reported cases of illegal lending activities of companies posing under fake licenses as legitimate money lenders. They would ask for ‘down payments’, ‘deposits’ and run away with your money. A great deal of these numbers can be found at the GCG Asia Scam finder.

Investment scams

Getting a high return for your cash, particularly in a short time can be alluring that makes people rush into getting scammed. Con artists utilize these strategies to exploit simple Malaysians who need to make fast money in a short amount of time without working hard for it. Investment scams also include a Mecca Investment that is directly targeted towards Malaysian Muslims. The scammer tempts the individual to invest in the holy city of Mecca in exchange for profit that can go up to 360%.

Macau scams

According to GCG Latest News, a Macau scam involves a person that gets contacted by an individual acting as a government official or a bank accusing the person of being involved with criminal activities. The scammers then inform the individual that they are under suspicion and need to be investigated for criminal offences such as tax evasion or drug trafficking. Using a psychological strategy that is utilized with the goal of putting the person into a panic who will then promptly move cash into the fraudsters’ account to “settle” or “solve” the bogus investigation right away.

Phone Scams

Who among us has not received a shady phone call from a strange number that just left our eyebrows raised? As you may have expected, these phone calls are most probably scammers trying to get to you. It is best that you never answer these overseas phone calls unless you confirm it is a legitimate number. One way you can prevent getting scammed by these calls is by getting the upcoming GCG Asia Scam Finder that uses algorithms to detect websites and phone numbers that will help you spot the scam before it is too late.

Love scams

Occurring commonly on social dating platforms such as Tinder, these scams mostly target older lonely women. The scammer usually creates a different persona that appeals to the ladies, usually impersonating a Caucasian man that stays in contact with her for a prolonged period of time thus gaining her trust and heart. After spending many hours in contact, the scammer tells the victim to transfer money to help him out with legal troubles. Through that process, the victim gets defrauded through a series of steps from made-up websites to fake officials that are in on the act.

Cryptocurrency scams

Cryptocurrency tricks are a mainstream way for con artists to fool individuals into sending cash. Most crypto tricks can show up as messages attempting to falsely incriminate somebody, or as false speculative activities and business returns. Scammers try their absolute best to trick you into sending cash or to make an instalment with Bitcoin or another kind of cryptographic money. When you do, your cash is gone, and there is no real way to get it back. Although they may promise you that there is a high return on investment but you will never see a return on the investment. “Unfortunately these kinds of schemes are on the rise in many Asian countries including Malaysia and Singapore,” GCG CEO and Founder Eddy Teow tells us.

Online shopping scams

Another common form of scam involves a scammer who will usually display a product promoting it with promises of great quality, including fake reviews created to push sales. However, the product received is usually faulty or of low quality, and some may not even deliver anything. GCG Asia Malaysia and Singapore warn that scammers might pretend to sell a product or service just in order to obtain your credit card details. You can simply avoid falling into this by shopping only at reputable verified sites.

Lastly, there are plenty of charity scams as well. Scammers usually exploit recent crises or natural disasters that are all over the news to cash in some quick money. They will create a fake charity website so that people can donate a certain sum online. However, the money won’t reach any of those who need help. Make sure if you’re donating any money to call in and double-check that the charity organization exists. Medical scams are also common, promising a newly discovered cure that promises quick recovery, they promote the treatments using fabricated reviews from individuals who have been cured. If a cure is being advertised with lots of reviews and it seems too good to be true, chances are it’s another common scam!

Luckily one of the solutions to combat scams is GCG Asia upcoming Scam Finder, which includes an algorithmic study of scammers information such as numbers, names, websites, images, being collected into a database which experts at the GCG Asia Scam Finder team hope to help organizations as well as individuals in finding and reporting scams.

How GCG Asia Scam Finder can help find fraud in insurance fraud - GCG Asia

Got Scammed Lately? Global ComTech Gossip (GCG Asia) Experts Advise on How to Protect Yourself from Financial Scams

April 5, 2021

by Kalianne Jorani GCG Asia Scam Finder

Fintech businesses in Asia are booming but not without several weaknesses in the development of the field. One of these is scams. As GCG Asia believes in growing the fintech field in Malaysia, Singapore as well as the region, education on scam protection is vital to its mission so that entrepreneurs and business do not fall prey. Subsequently, there is a basic requirement for organizations in the fintech field to guarantee that they have sound and exhaustive misrepresentation avoidance plans and strategies set up to tackle the problem of fraud.

Fintech is reaching new areas ranging from banking and financial industries all the way to credit unions. As the field is advancing rapidly in the current environment, online businesses in e-commerce are expanding rapidly too, offering ever-more prominent open doors for fraud. Our experts in GCG Asia Malaysia will help you alleviate the problem of getting scammed drawing on our teams in our offices based in Singapore and Cambodia as well.

According to GCG Asia founder and CEO Dr Eddy Teow, “Fintech is in every home and every home should be protected from scams. Although technology is moving fast, some organizations are left behind technologically, for instance, SMEs (Small to Medium-sized Enterprises) are more vulnerable to fraud if they are not equipped with the tools and knowledge needed to avoid scams.”

GCG Asia founder and CEO Dr Eddy Teow also pointed out the importance of data protection, “I believe that big companies that do not invest in data protection, they might find themselves getting scammed if not equipped with the correct tools,” he said. For example, a fintech company in Malaysia was scammed by hackers who stole their data because they did not have adequate data protection measures. The upside of the current advancement in technology has catalyzed data protection and fraud prevention which can be useful to the company by utilizing tech to its advantage.

Unfortunately, there are many individuals paying attention to an industry that is at the forefront of innovative advancement in fraud where they see opportunities to misuse gaps in information security. GCG Asia Singapore expert fintech analyst Maggie Choo revealed that the most common scam in Malaysia is the misappropriation of another person’s identity in other words identity theft. “Although identity theft has been occurring for years, the concept of phishing is relatively new, in which the scammers set up digital platforms (such as emails, websites, SMS texts) to trick people into submitting their information to the scammers,” she said.

GCG Asia is trying to assist organizations in Malaysia and Singapore and around the region to solve these problems. For instance, a few organizations use AI to forestall identity theft, opening new client accounts, and approving clients, in addition to other things. Different administrations permit organizations from various ventures to share positive and negative data about gadgets so vendors can decide if a gadget has been recently connected to fraud. Essentially, for GCG Asia, the organization uses information from various sources to gather and share data on billions of individuals, permitting web-based businesses to confirm new clients, therefore lessening the danger of scam purchases in Asia.

A very important tool that helps detect fraud is machine-based fraud detectors such as GCG Asia’s upcoming Scam Finder. While machine learning is being used by major corporations around the world, fraud is being detected by algorithms connecting large quantities of data and generating solutions that can detect the scam account to deceitful practices. In this way Scam Finder helps save time with relatively high accuracy. Says GCG Asia CEO Dr Eddy Teow, “We are confident that GCG Asia’s Scam Finder is likely to take over the market in the near future. Our Scam Finder product will fill the gap in anti-fraud solutions we see out there.”

Furthermore, major corporations are already using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist in fraud detection. Financial institutions such as Visa, Mastercard, Deloitte, Ernst & Young use Artificial Intelligence to track transactions by the device name, transaction size, location, time, by studying these variables algorithms to detect the likelihood of scam activity.

On the other hand, fraud can be avoided beforehand. By identifying a number of the types of fraud, you can arm yourself and your organisation with the knowledge to eliminate scams before they happen.

Types of fraud and how GCG Asia can help you find a scam before falling into the trap

1. Loan application fraud

How GCG Asia Scam Finder can help find fraud in loan applications
Photo credits – Taken from fraud.net

Loan application fraud occurs when a scammer provides false data for a loan application. Although it can be detected most of the time by banks, it still occurs frequently. Loan fraud also applies to houses, cars, and business start-ups. According to GCG Asia Singapore Analyst Zhang Lim, loan fraud can be prevented using several methods such as looking for several applications under one name, lack of address and physical location, asking for backend information on start-ups where usually fraudsters do not dive too deep into a subject, asking for references and following up with those references, and finally asking for financial documents (bank statements, audits, fiscal analysis, yearly earning and spending). GCG Asia Scam Finder will guarantee diminishing loan application fraud by detecting algorithms. Therefore, by applying these methods, the possibility of fraud minimizes as more information is being presented when diving deeper into a subject and acquiring information.

2. Insurance fraud

How GCG Asia Scam Finder can help find fraud in insurance fraud
Photo credits – Taken from www.irishexaminer.com

Insurance fraud varies from health insurance to car insurance. It usually occurs when the insured person seeks compensation on a fake instance or exaggerates to exploit the policies of the insurance company. It can happen by faking accidents, burning cars or houses to claim the insurance. Insurance fraud can also be abused by the seller of the insurance, for instance, by not paying claims by diversion of premiums and working under fake licences to attract vulnerable parties and take their money.

Here are some methods to avoid insurance fraud: setting up a clear structure for employees to detect the problem by using third party data (police, employment) and criminal history. Another method could be reviewing the insurance claim by recognition, identification, and investigation of the subject at hand. Please visit the GCG Asia Malaysia & Singapore website for more information.

3. Debt collection scams

How GCG Asia Scam Finder can help find fraud in debt collection scams
Photo credits – Taken from www.consumerfinance.gov

Debt collection scams are the most popular type of scam. You may have already received scam calls or texts asking you to pay right away or you will be faced with jail or legal issues, while sometimes it may seem real because they might enquire about the real debt you owe. One way to detect the scam is if the caller is asking for money right away, by pressuring the individual to pay their debt to the scammer. GCG Asia Scam Finder suggests some ways of detecting scammers on the phone are if they ask for information that they already have and if that information is given it can be used for further ways to commit fraud. Another way to detect the scam is by asking the caller for further information on the company they are posing as. They might negotiate the debt overall value and ask for it to be wired directly. As confirmed by GCG Asia founder and CEO Dr Eddy Teow, “Legitimate debt collectors will never negotiate the fixed debt value on the phone or e-mail.”

Fraud and scams occur every single day to companies, organisations as well as the common person on the street. Fintech can assist to solve this problem. With the current technological developments, it has become a cost-effective and easy way for scam detector solutions such as GCG Asia’s Scam Finder. Using the GCG Asia Scam Finder product is a logical and practical way of detecting scams around Malaysia and Singapore. It’s a robust cutting edge solution using Artificial Intelligence and big data to ensure fraud in its many guises are diminished by a huge degree.

Organisations such as GCG Asia are helping customers by developing algorithms to find ways to prevent fraud and therefore increase profits and conserve costs. In the US alone the fintech industry attracted more than USD$18 billion in venture capital funds. Regardless of the huge development, we’ve seen in fintech, there is as yet a mind-boggling opportunity ahead for fintech firms, all things considered.

As fintech has expanded to include areas such as crowdfunding, stock trading, insurance, mobile applications, virtual wallets, cryptocurrency and much more scams can occur more frequently to exploit these financial technological services. GCG Asia’s Scam Finder detects scams by training machine learning and artificial intelligence in helping companies to improve their fraud protection. GCG Asia is helping companies finding scams and by providing the latest news in anti-scam solutions specifically in Malaysia and Singapore while also keeping the customers in mind to help improve and adapt to the evolving ways of fraud detection.

GCG Asia Scam Finder Developers Shed Some Light on Their Upcoming New Product via An Online Pre-Launch Event Organized by GCG Asia Malaysia and GCG Asia Singapore

April 1, 2021

by Melissa Tan GCG Asia Scam Finder

Back in 2018, the concept behind Scam Finder was introduced by a team of independent developers in Malaysia and Singapore. The concept was pretty straightforward: a computer algorithm designed to detect false financial investment websites that are heavily present online. These websites advertise heavily through a large number of false marketing campaigns led by professional scammers hiding behind false promises of financial gains and investment returns.

GCG Asia Scam Finder’s aim is to combat such unethical behaviour by protecting average consumers, as well as fintech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs from falling prey to such scams and fraudulent behaviours. This allows for a safer browsing experience for a large number of internet users in Asia and around the world.

Scam Finder is now a concept slowly coming to life. Hence, a timely pre-launch event was organized by GCG Asia Malaysia and Singapore to provide us with better insights into Scam Finder’s potential and influence on online safe browsing. The event was held online through a zoom session in which participants were invited through email. The participants of the event consisted of GCG Asia contributors, Scam Finder investors as well as Scam Finder’s development team. Most importantly, in attendance was Dr. Lee Ong, head of development for GCG Asia Scam Finder and Dr. Eddy Teow, CEO of GCG Asia: Global ComTech Gossip.

The event began with a speech from Dr. Eddy Teow, in which he stressed the importance of combating financial fraud and pledged his full support to GCG Asia Scam Finder. Dr. Eddy Teow expressed his confidence in the project, and said he was hopeful that the product would be launching very soon as he felt that such a powerful tool should have existed a long time ago. “I strongly believe in Scam Finder’s ability to ensure safe browsing for all internet users to protect themselves from internet scammers who are toxic to our passionate fintech community,” he expressed during his opening speech. He went on to add: “My hope is to eliminate all chances for scammers to commit fraudulent behaviour on the internet or at the very least, to limit their toxic activities.” Dr. Eddy Teow openly admitted that he had once been a victim of such online scams early in his career while in Cambodia, and expressed his willingness to help fund the project further if necessary.

After his speech, a few members of the development team shared some interesting insights on how the concept of GCG Asia Scam Finder was developed. It all started with a group of entrepreneurs with backgrounds in software development in Singapore. One of the members of the development team was informed by his friend that he had been a victim of an online investment firm. This incident prompted the developer to bring this topic to Dr. Lee Ong, who at the time was a freelance Computational Algorithm Engineer and university professor. Dr. Ong took a strong interest in this incident and managed to gather his entrepreneur friends and a few experts in software engineering to conduct more research into online fraudulent financial websites.

The team in Singapore would eventually realize that scam websites contain a familiar pattern and rely heavily on keywords and search engine optimization which could be traced back to online social media bots created for the purpose of ranking themselves on google. They had also noticed that such websites were not legally registered or licensed to operate under any financial governing organization or legal framework. The team then realized how simple it would be if some sort of software can be developed to verify such behaviour and red flag such websites based on computational background checks operated solely by a precisely written algorithm.

After realizing this opportunity, the team grew to include a large number of software engineers, SEO experts, algorithm experts and web developers from Malaysia and Singapore. The concept was in its early stages however, as development was stalled due to limited resources and funding. It was then that Dr. Lee Ong brought the idea to a number of potentially interested parties, one of whom was GCG Asia founder Dr. Eddy Teow who immediately realized Scam Finder’s potential and agreed to fund it.

The icing on the cake is its dynamic algorithms, which simply means that the computational logical method of doing background checks is able to grow and learn by itself without any sort of human intervention. This is why deep learning technology was embedded into this algorithm for the hope of improving the basic functions of the algorithm and to combat any sort of attempts by scammers to combat the algorithm.

Dr. Koay Chee Ming of GCG Asia Singapore, one of the developers tasked with developing the deep learning algorithm, stated the following: “Deep learning is inspired by the structure and functionality of such algorithms. Deep learning is basically large neural networks that form a brain that functions on its own and most importantly learns from its mistakes. This technology is quite recent and is currently being used in the IT industry today as it is somewhat the future of Artificial Intelligence.” Dr. Koay seemed confident in the algorithm’s self-learning capabilities and is hopeful that such capabilities will drastically improve the functionality of Scam Finder.

Self-learning capabilities are considered to be the only way for Artificial Intelligence to improve and become less dependent on human intervention. The technology is currently being used in many indie projects and is also used by major corporations, most notably Tesla with its smart self-driving vehicles that are purely based on its self-learning software.

During the event, a question was raised by one of the participants on whether Scam Finder would organize its own marketing materials to promote GCG Asia Scam Finder. The developers asserted that such actions would be taken not only to promote Scam Finder but to give assurance to all that the product is being developed for the sole purpose of combating financial fraud and that it would make no attempt to market it falsely. The developers had also expressed the potential of starting a marketing campaign against online financial frauds on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook in order to raise awareness on the importance of safe browsing and combatting scammers.

Perhaps the most important question for GCG Asia Scam Finder team: when will Scam Finder actually launch? “Well, the only answer we have for now is very soon,” Dr Ong said. They mentioned that their concern was of launching Scam Finder too early without adequate trial runs, as is necessary to ensure that the algorithm is running properly with no bugs. However, the development team revealed that the results of the early trials are very promising. They are confident that the trial runs will be successful in order to launch the product very soon.

The event ended with a closing speech from Dr. Lee Ong, where he expressed his great appreciation to everyone who had supported the concept. He had also expressed his gratitude to the development team in which he mentioned how hard they have been working on this project especially during the pandemic when development paused for a while. Dr. Lee Ong said “I am extremely grateful and proud of the team at GCG Asia Scam Finder who worked tirelessly to deliver deadlines and develop a product that would benefit internet users for the long term.”

Dr. Eddy Teow, CEO of GCG Asia, concluded the event by reiterating his personal excitement about the potential of this new product. “I can’t wait to unveil this product. I anticipate that this will be well received by the public and I firmly believe that this ties into our larger goal of delivering products that serve a greater purpose. I see this as a form of public service as this will really help people to protect themselves, their organisations and their companies from scammers and fraudsters,” he said.

GCG Asia Scam Finder is a tool that could greatly enhance safe browsing and protect people’s finances from scammers. By modelling itself as a guardian for all internet users, many aspects of GCG Asia Scam Finder are exciting, such as its ability to self learn and become more efficient as it continues to operate which would allow it to combat all attempts for scammers to bypass safety nets. It’s definitely a promising tool for the future of safe browsing.

The team at Global ComTech Gossip as well as GCG Asia founder Dr. Eddy Teow are hopeful that Scam Finder will become a successful product and change the way in which we surf the internet. We will continue coverage of GCG Asia Scam Finder latest news to ensure that you are up to date with the latest development of GCG Asia Scam Finder.

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