Bangkok (VNA) - Thailand launched an anti-scam digital literacy campaign on July 27 in a bid to make Thai users vigilant and equipped to tackle online deception, as well as support Thailand’s sustainable digital economy.
The #ThaisAware campaign is a collaboration between short-form video platform operator TikTok, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DES), the Office of the Consumer Protection Board, the Bank of Thailand (BoT), the Central Investigation Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA), COFACT Project and the Thailand Consumers Council.
Under the campaign, government agencies and civil society organisations will launch educational content based on their expertise. The BOT and the SEC will play a pivotal role in educating and raising awareness about deception in financial transactions. Meanwhile, the consumer protection board and the consumers council have joined forces to provide knowledge on how to act when falling victim to online scams, including cases where consumers receive unfair or substandard products.
The campaign also allows TikTok users nationwide to create their content and put a hashtag #ThaisAware on it to communicate warnings and enhance skills to combat digital fraud.
Online fraud poses multidimensional threats to Thai consumers, particularly social media users. Citing reports by the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau, TikTok noted that 700 scams and fraud cases had occurred daily, with 40% involving e-commerce crime.
As many as 19,960 online complaints were reported to the ETDA in the first half of this year. The most reported issues were online shopping scams (43.44%), followed by illegal websites (31.27%), and other issues like investment scams, online job fraud and personal data protection (25.29%)./.
