Taiwan’s citizens and tourists are the main victims of calls and messages from fraudsters. The fact that Taiwan is a small island makes it better place as a base for fraudsters’ gangs and overall, as a rehearsal for organized crimes. What is more, Taiwan is the leading country in the field of technology and, especially, within the cybersecurity movements. This means that the scammers have better base for developing their skills and improving software and hardware they use.
The biggest increase of fraudsters’ work was noticed during the lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic, when people where the most exposed to the stress and at the same time using their gadgets almost all the time. According to Whoscall’s report the growth of scam calls was with an alarming 488 precents. During 12 month period almost 14 million mobile phishing attacks were observed
Whocall is one of the most popular spam blocking apps, owned by Gogolook. It is used not only in Taiwan, but also across East Asia, moreover during their work with CIB’s (Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau) more than 52.3 million scam messages and 13.1 million scam calls were blocked in Taiwan alone.
Moreover, more than 1.6 billion of phone numbers were blocked by the artificial intelligence used in the Whocall systems.
As we can see that is the huge problem that can be spread not only through Asia, but all over the world, that is why it is important to stop fraudsters on such small ground comparing to the worldwide scale.
However, is it possible to completely win the war against fraud, especially such widely spread and massive one? The answer will not be positive or promising, it is – no. The more ways to fight against this are discovered by cyber police or companies like Gogolook, the more inventive fraudsters become.
This is the battle that will be continuing for a long time until current technologies will modify to the level when it becomes possible to overtake the innovations of fraudsters.
To read more about the front-line battle between Taiwan and fraud: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63075729