Letters | Hong Kong should teach fact-checking skills to fight fraud and scams
- Readers discuss the challenge of distinguishing true information from the fake, the death of the Iranian president, and a response to Palestinian suffering
Criminal scams are clearly a headache for the local authorities. It’s not only that they cause severe economic losses and mental distress to the victims involved. The aftermath is an erosion of trust that results in people questioning the authenticity of every connection and interaction.
Like many other Hongkongers, I receive a fair share of phishing calls and scam messages from unscrupulous people pretending to be government officials, bank staff or couriers. Well aware of the surge in fraud incidents in recent years, I find myself more and more reluctant to give away my contact details to anyone. To protect myself, I no longer respond to any suspicious messages or take calls from any unknown caller unless they leave a message clarifying their purpose first.
Moreover, I always do my own due diligence when dealing with new businesses or individuals asking for payment or my personal details. And this is exactly where I believe most people struggle. When you review the scam incidents reported, the victims often did their own due diligence too and still fell prey to fraud.
But how do you actually authenticate someone? In this digital era when you can create fake websites, social media profiles and images on the fly – has anyone watched the documentary Bitconned? – how can you really verify someone’s identity? A Google search easily yields thousands of search results. How can you effectively use the internet and find the information you need?
And what public authoritative sources are available here for identity checks? With so much misinformation online nowadays, how can one tell fake news from trustworthy sources?
Maybe we should provide due diligence training in Hong Kong as an anti-scam measure. Unless we can equip people with adequate knowledge and tools to properly do research and due diligence, scam incidents will continue to rise due to technological advancements. Until then, we simply cannot trust anything that isn’t live and in-person.
Kimmie Tang, Tuen Mun
Could Raisi’s death escalate the Gaza war?
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the event to which the outbreak of World War 1 is generally attributed. Franz Ferdinand’s assassination by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip in June 1914 caused Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, which in turn triggered a series of events that eventually led to a number of European powers declaring war on each other, starting a world war.
Was Franz Ferdinand such an important figure or Gavrilo Princip an authorised agent acting on the instruction of a nation state? I doubt it.
When Princip was interviewed during his incarceration by a psychiatrist, he said he did not feel responsible for starting the war because he believed it would have happened even if the assassination had not taken place.
In other words, he believed war happened because there were people who wanted it to happen, and he had merely provided them with an excuse by assassinating Franz Ferdinand. If he had not provided the excuse, somebody else would have done so.
If and when war is declared between the two nations, the events that follow will then provide an excuse for the superpowers to also get involved and settle their own scores, which in turn might just start the next world war.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy, Selangor, Malaysia
Palestinian victims must be remembered and mourned
K.M. Nasir, Mid-Levels
