M’sians still giving away sensitive info

PETALING JAYA: Social media scams are all about collecting personal details and yet Malaysians are still giving it freely without realising the dangers, Symantec (Asia Pacific and Japan) cyber security services senior director Peter Sparkes said.

That’s why that’s been a significant increase in such scams, he said.

“For example, if I want to collect your information, I’d create an app offering free tickets to the hottest nightclubs in KL, an app that gives discounts or an uncensored Kim Kardashian video that’s fake.

“To download it, you’ll first have to answer personal questions. And before you know it, you’d have told me all about your family,” he said.

Last year, 26,783 such cases were reported, he said, adding that the country ranked sixth in the Asia Pacific and Japan region, and 33 globally, for social media scams.

“Cybercriminals know that there’s incredible Internet penetration here and that’s why Malaysia ranks highly in social media scams.

Symantec (Malaysia) systems engineering director David Rajoo said social media scams are where cybercriminals use technical or social engineering tools to trick users.

They leverage on Internet users who voluntarily share and click on links or photos which are actually malicious sites or sites which have already been infected, for money.

“One social media scam took advantage of comedian Robin Williams’ death.

“It got users to share his ‘goodbye video’ with friends before they could view it.

“They were instructed to fill out surveys, download software, or were redirected to a fake news website. But there was no video.”

MCA Public Services and Complaints Bureau chairman Datuk Seri Michael Chong said the syndicates were so smart that they know how to trick you into revealing your information.

Federation of Malaysian Consu­mers Associations secretary-general Datuk Paul Selvaraj urged the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to lead an awareness campaign to educate the public on the dangers of sharing too much information.

He said children were particularly at risk as they often go online unsupervised.

MCMC strategic communication head Sheikh Raffie Abd Rahman said the public needed to know what they were installing on their devices.

“Check on the application’s permission and their privacy policy, as you may be volunteering more information than necessary,” he urged.

Sheikh Raffie said greyware includes applications, such as adware and spyware, that can carry out unwanted actions, such as tracking users’ online behaviour or bombard users with advertisement pop-ups.

“In the case of adware, the applications may be sharing your information with third parties,” he said.

Some unscrupulous parties have also resorted to impersonating the authorities by sending e-mail to seek personal information.

Last month, the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) warned the public not to provide any feedback to e-mail sent from [e-mail] which asks taxpayers to give their details to obtain their tax refunds.

Receiving calls from the public questioning the email’s authenticity, the IRB said refunds are only processed based on taxpayers’ information in its database.