NT$239.5 billion lost to scams over past year in Taiwan: Report

Taipei, Sept. 30 (CNA) People in Taiwan lost a total of NT$239.5 billion (US$7.37 billion) to different types of scams over the past 12 months, an anti-scam research report released Monday indicated, based on a survey of people in East, Southeast and South Asia.

The total losses to scams in Taiwan ranked fourth behind South Korea, Singapore, and Japan among the 13 countries and territories participating in the survey, conducted jointly by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, Gogolook, and ScamAdviser, a website legitimacy checker.

The total losses in Taiwan were estimated proportionally through a survey of 5,003 Taiwanese, who averaged a loss of US$1,940 each, and they amounted to 1 percent of Taiwan's 2023 gross domestic product.

The survey, which collated responses from around 25,000 respondents over three-day periods in June and July, was also conducted in China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, Kara Yang (楊莞儀), a PR staffer at Whoscall under Gogolook, told CNA.

The US$1,940 loss per capita represented a 67.7 percent increase from the previous year, second only to South Korea, where individual scam losses nearly doubled from US$1,384 to US$2,738 during the same period, Yang said.

According to the survey's results, only 2.74 percent of Taiwanese -- the lowest of any group of respondents -- said they would be willing to accept an offer of US$20,000 on the condition of sending US$19,000 to another bank account to keep the remaining US$1,000.

In contrast, 20.8 percent of Indian citizens would consider participating in the same fraudulent scheme, the highest in Asia.

While only 17 percent of Taiwanese respondents said they were "not confident at all" in their ability to recognize scams, the share of those who felt "confident" or "very confident" dipped to 55 percent, down 5 percentage points from the previous year.

Whether that decline was caused by the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) was not specified, but at least 65 percent of respondents said they were aware of AI's various use in scams, such as generating dialogues, mimicking voices, or creating images and videos.

Meanwhile, phone calls and social media posts have overtaken text/SMS messages as the most common scam delivery methods, with social media scams ballooning to 55 percent, an increase of 21 percent from last year.

Among all social media platforms, Facebook had the highest rate of exposure to scams (63 percent) two years in a row, where scam tactics primarily involve fake investment experts or analysts luring victims to invest in or purchase fraudulent financial products.

The most common scam tactic in Taiwan was identity theft (24 percent), and the primary way of paying scammers was through bank transfers (39 percent), the survey found.

In scam cases, only 6 percent of Taiwanese have gotten their money back, the survey found, while nearly 30 percent said they would not report cases because the procedures were too complicated and they do not believe it would help even if they did report it.

An initial version of the study was released based on countries and areas, Yang said, with a more comprehensive version set to be published in October.