Cybercrime – Upstream Anticipation by the Hong Kong Police

Cybercrime is indeed becoming indeed a rampant and formless cloud over the worldwide Web and by extension of course into all social media platforms.  For sure millions of world citizens are extremely gullible or trustful or greedy or a combination of all three, any or all of which identify a cyber scam victim.

What is certain is that regulatory assistance is welcome.

The Hong Kong Police is very alert to counter scams and arrange their prosecution. 

The police has long operated an Anti-Deception Coordination Centre (“ADCC”).

In May 2023 the police launched an Upstream Scam Intervention Scheme in collaboration with twelve (12) retail banks in Hong Kong (“USI Scheme”).  The purpose was the enhancement and support of the long reach pre-scam warning structure to anticipate in the prevention of deception by online scammers thereby mitigating losses suffered by their victims.  The USI Scheme is scrupulously involved to analyse suspicious bank accounts and in this way to identify and to forewarn individuals who may be at risk of falling victim to scams.

For the best way forward in this upstream coordination the ADCC has registered itself as an SMS sender through the Office of the Communications Authority Short Message Service Sender Registration Scheme. 

In implementation of the USI Scheme the banks and police have coordinated effort to identify and contact potential victims with phone calls, visits by the police or SMS messages.  By way of such interaction, the ADCC or officers of the bank concerned will provide potential victims with information such as details of the bank accounts to be implicated in the Scheme in order to facilitate verification and assessment by potential victims.

As at the end of November 2023, 579 ongoing deception cases were intervened under the USI Scheme.  At all material times it has been very clear that police officers and bank staff will not request disclosure of personal information or banking credentials of potential scam victims nor will ask them to transfer funds to any accounts during the interaction.

As a further somewhat cute technical embroidering into this fabric the police have established a Scameter which helps the public identify frauds and online pitfalls.  Any known details about any caller, online seller, “friend” request, job as or investment websites can be entered by the member of the public through a platform account name or number, payment account, phone number, email address and URL to assess the risk of fraud and cybersecurity. 

The mobile implication of the Scameter is online with effect from the 1 January 2024 through an App which features the functions of instant fraud risk access, view and sharing of scam prevention advice and receiving of real-time push notification.  All the relevant details about the suspected scammer can be entered by the approached party with the account, name or number, payment account, phone number, email address and URL for fraud and cybersecurity risk assessment.