KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 16 — Malaysians lost a combined RM1.22 billion in the first ten months of the year to online scams and cybercrime, said Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching revealed.
According to The Star, Teo said the scams were also evolving from the previous tactics of posing as the police.
“Alarmingly, scammers have now begun posing as representatives of the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC), falsely claiming they can help recover stolen money.
“Victims, desperate to recoup their losses, often fall for these secondary scams, further compounding their financial woes,” she was quoted saying.
She said 274 fake sponsored posts impersonating AGC agents were removed from Facebook in just a week, with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) blocking 255,745 online posts this year.
Teo said the fact that the posts were sponsored implicated social media platforms as at least partly responsible for the scam epidemic.
Teo also expressed concern about child exploitation online, revealing that 1,947 harmful posts related to such content were removed in the past year.
Speaking at the launch of the “Teens, Tech, and Trust” white paper, Teo described social media as a double-edged sword for teenagers, offering creativity but also risks like cyberbullying and exploitation.
The government has introduced new measures, including the Online Safety Bill and licensing for major social media platforms starting next year, to address such matters.
Among the main thrusts of the new laws is the empowerment of authorities to better combat growing cybercrime.
