Thailand is among the top three countries in the Asia-Pacific region for fraud and financial scams due to the proliferation of smartphones and mobile payments.
According to Google’s Bad Apps 2023 report, Thailand was among the top three countries in the Asia-Pacific region to experience a significant spike in Google’s financial fraud last year.
‘There was a significant increase in fraud and financial fraud in 2023. In particular, Thailand, Singapore, and India recorded a considerable spike in financial fraud. Aman Dayal, head of security for Google Play in Asia-Pacific, told the media during a press conference about the report.
Asia-Pacific has become a hotbed of fraud because it has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world—over 90 per cent—and many users use their phones to make transactions.
‘It is a goldmine for fraudsters to commit online fraud,’ Dayal noted.
In addition, fraudsters enjoy the respect of authority figures in Asia. For example, fraudsters pose as representatives of government agencies or banks.
In addition, there needs to be more digital literacy in many parts of the Asia-Pacific region, making it challenging to combat online threats effectively. This includes older mobile phone users, who are more susceptible to deceptive messages, risky apps and scams.
However, people of a broader age range are also susceptible to threats. A recent Google study found that 25- to 34-year-olds in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam are the most vulnerable to scammers.
Google recently enhanced its Google Message feature in Thailand, Singapore and India – countries that saw a spike in scams last year – to protect users from this form of social engineering.
The Google Play shop includes a real-time scanning feature first rolled out in the Asia-Pacific region last year, starting with Thailand, India, and Singapore. Today, this new feature has already detected more than five million new malicious apps, protecting users worldwide.
Google recently launched Google Play Protect in Thailand and Singapore to block the installation of potentially harmful apps that attempt to access device permissions commonly used for fraud.
Google began rolling out the feature to Android devices in Singapore in February and started in Thailand in April.
‘The programme aims to directly block the installation of potentially risky apps that attempt to access sensitive device permissions, which we’ve observed is often used for fraud,’ Dayal said.
According to the Bank of Thailand, phishing apps posing as banking apps have become widespread, leading to losses of more than one billion baht in 2023.
Annabelle Chow, chief clinical psychologist at Annabelle Psychology, said during the press conference that the consequences of fraud are financial and emotional.
According to Annabelle, fraud victims suffer a lot of psychological damage. They are unable to sort out their emotional distress, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, where the mentality prevents people from talking openly and trusting and empathising with each other.
Dayal said that in 2023, Google prevented 2.28 million apps that violated security rules from being published in the Google Play shop and banned 333,000 accounts of malicious developers from accessing the Google Play shop.
‘Our continued investment in machine learning systems and improved app verification processes will continue the fight against bad players,’ Dayal said.
More Articles Here
More Articles Here
