Digital bank GoTyme, a joint venture between Singapore-based multi-country digital banking group, Tyme and the Gokongwei Group of companies maintains that prevention against scammers starts with awareness, as some of its customers became prey to scammers.
GoTyme bared that one of its customers reported that she was scammed of at least P50,000 last week.
The victim transferred P50K from her bank to the fake seller’s account with GoTyme Bank. The victim informed GoTyme Customer Service at around 7 pm (but it should have been made earlier) and an internal case report was immediately made.
GoTyme fraud strategy head, Jason Brasileño, then called the victim to urge her to report the incident to the police as soon as possible and not to wait until Monday, which the victim had planned on doing. Brasileño convinced the victim to file the police report on Saturday morning.
The scam involved a fake online seller of cars, who had conned the victim into putting a down payment of P50,000 on the item from her bank to GoTyme.
Fortunately, the team acted immediately, traced the money trail, and put the account on hold. It was also a good thing that the money was still intact in GoTyme.
GoTyme said that in this situation, in which all the people and agencies involved did not lose a day to act on the incident, it is highly likely that the victim will recover his money.
Vital tool
“Prevention, through awareness, is a vital tool in combating scammers. Experts have, time and again, given online communities the following pro tip: Stop, breathe, ask, as often, scammers rush their victims and push lots of emotional hot buttons to get you to stop thinking rationally. Never let strangers force you into fast decisions. Pause, calm yourself, and think clearly and critically. Chances are you’ll quickly see the situation for what it is. Do not be afraid to hang up and validate with your financial institution and/or law enforcement,” Brasileño said.
While everyone has the responsibility to prevent a scam incident — financial institutions, law enforcement, and consumers — the latter play the biggest role in protecting themselves.
“We cannot overemphasize the importance of vigilance in all matters, especially online activities and financial transactions,” according to Brasileño.
Fake online sellers
He pointed out that the most reported scams in the Philippines over the previous years, and especially during Christmas, are fake online sellers, shopping websites, shipping and delivery notifications; and scams that have to do with free trials, gifts, crypto investment, foreign exchange investment, loans, tech support, “emergencies” involving relatives or friends, romance and online charity.
GoTyme Bank partner Scam Watch Pilipinas, a cybersecurity movement intended to educate as many Filipinos as possible against cyber fraud and online scams, has enjoined the public to develop four attitudes that could prevent them from becoming a victim of online scams:
• Magdamot — be stingy; never give money or information to people you don’t know or you have just met
• Magduda — be suspicious; do not fall prey to too-good-to-be-true offers
• Mang-isnob — be a snob; ignore SMS, email or social media messages with threats or warning coming from banking, financial and e-commerce institutions especially if you know that you have no pending transaction with them
• Magsumbong — report incidents of scam to the Inter-Agency Response Center Hotline 1326
GoTyme stressed that if banks and financial institutions are raising their game in the fight against fraud, scammers are also getting better at what they do.
AI
Artificial Intelligence is the common tool being used by both financial institutions and scammers.
The latter now use AI in so-called deepfake to fabricate fake IDs, forge faces, and clone voices.
Last year, The New York Times published a story featuring instances in which customers’ voices were synthesized to get bank employees to transfer money.
But voice cloning is just one of the new tools in the arsenal of tricksters who are getting smarter, savvier, quicker, and more devious.
Both Brasileño and Scam Watch Pilipinas spokesperson Art Samaniego have confirmed the alarming rise in cases of scams and cyber fraud in the country especially during the recent Christmas holidays.
Brasileño said. “GoTyme tries to harmonize the digital banking that provides their customers with real people instead of robots talking and addressing their needs.”
He adds that GoTyme has invested much to acquire sophisticated AI technology to fend off AI-aided cyber frauds, thus readily flagging unusual transactions to thwart any fraud or scam attempt.
Moreover, AI considerably boosts real-time detection, as it can decipher vast amounts of data extremely quickly. It can also compare the data to datasets about a user’s normal behavioral patterns.
“Thus, it can quickly detect anomalies in bank app usage, payments, and other transactions,” he explains.
“This all happens quickly in real-time, which speeds up fraud detection. This allows you to prevent rather than detect fraud, and it also reduces the risk of ongoing schemes.”
GoTyme assures the public and its customers that it will always listen to the problem or issue at hand through helpful humans who will walk you through the correct processes.
