With the advancement of technology, the numbers of scam cases have also increased. Quick rich schemes, bogus emails, and texts requesting personal banking information are just a few types of fraudulent and scam cases in the country.

Many have been cheated of their monies while some have even resorted to taking their own lives.

UCSI University was called to hold a Scam Awareness Forum which was aimed at creating awareness amongst its staff, students as well as members of the surrounding public.

This forum is a community engagement project by UCSI in line with the SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. It is hoped that this forum will be a platform to educate and expose how scammers think, react and entice the public into falling prey to some of their sweet deals.

Speakers at the forum include Tuan Kamarul Zaman Hj Abdul Rahman, a legal practitioner, former Magistrate and also current President of Tribunal for Housing and Strata Management, ASP G. Janarthanan Nair, Chief Cheras Commercial Crime Investigation Department Divison, and Edwan B. Mohd Aidid, CyberSecurity Outreach and Capacity Building Division Executive.

At the forum, ASP Janarthanan Nair spoke about types of scam, cyberlaws, causes of cybercrime, prevention measures and he also talked about prevention campaigns. He also exposed the recent statistics regarding scams involving Malaysians this year.

Edwan from CyberSecurity talked about cyber safety issues, cyberbullying, cyber crimes, internet addiction, cyber health threats, social media threats, online child abuse and also child sexual grooming. 

“We, Malaysians are somehow trustworthy of people who we communicate online with which makes us vulnerable to sharing information with them,” he said.

The last speaker, Tuan Kamarul Zaman enlightened the audience on penal sanctions governing scams in the country. He also explained the Macau scam which involves telecommunications fraud, African scams, phishing, spoofing and cyber crimes.