BALANCING STATE Action WITH PERSONAL Duty
Unfortunately, as 86 per cent of overall reported scams involve self-effected payments, personal accountability is the best way to avoid being duped. This includes keeping up to date with latest scam methods, and being diligent over too-good-to-be-true website offers.
Similar methods are already being used to combat phishing-related frauds in the makings.
The proposed Shared Responsibility Framework lists the different responsibilities that citizens, telcos, and financial institutions have in preventing people from falling for phishing scams. If either of the financial institutions or the company fails to perform their duties under the construction, victims of phishing scams perhaps only recover their losses from them. If their obligations are carried out, the person did bear complete responsibility for his own costs.
Similar rules ought to apply for self-effected payments. If we ca n’t be persuaded, we should n’t need the police to persuade us that we are being defrauded, much less to impose restrictions on our bank accounts.
The role for self-effected transfers had inevitably fall on the people themselves, with broad public awareness campaigns and different proactive measures to combat scams.
If a prospective victim is finally defrauded, they ought to have no problems if they are unable to be persuaded by the police to stop a certain transaction.
There comes a point where authorities intervention has end and individual responsibility may take over. The million-dollar issue is: Where does this line be drawn?
Mark Yeo is a Director at Fortress Law Corporation. He was originally a Deputy Public Prosecutor with the Attorney-General’s Chambers.