Scamhunt (Scams)

Safety & Security - Social media scams

Team members:

Ibrahim Elouard, Software Engineer
Kazymir Rabier, Software Engineer
Loy Juncheng, Software Engineer
Ramesh Gopalkrishnan, PM/Designer
Alison Chang, PM

Problem Statement

BACKGROUND
As per Cybercrime Brief for 2024, more scammers are targeting victims through Meta platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), and Telegram.

Reported cases have increased to 8,336 from 6,555 last year. For ~85% of reported social media scams, scammers used these platforms to contact potential victims.

Of the total scam victims, adults aged 30 to 49 made up the largest proportion.

Social media platforms are home to all the top scams reported this year including Job scams, Phishing scams, E-commerce scams and Investment scams.

SOURCE

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Anti-scam government agencies struggle to effectively request removal of scam posts on social media platforms like Facebook & Insta because they lack access to scams reported by users on these platforms.

Ineffective takedown requests and slower identification of new scam threats is causing Singaporeans to lose millions per year.

Proposed Solution

A Telegram bot that enables Singaporeans to easily report scams by sharing links and screenshots for social media scam posts.
It then compiles this data into usable reports for authorities to make effective takedown requests.

This is not possible in Scamshield app right now.

Singaporeans can contribute additional information about their reported scams, view their contributions, and track their personal impact and a leaderboard to see top scam hunters in Singapore.

Future versions will bring Scamhunt bots to more messaging platforms and support additional media formats for easier scam reporting.

The core gaming aspect will be enhanced to include badges, weekly challenges, group-based hunting mini-games and more!

Scamhunt aims to create a centralized database of social media scam reports for authorities to identify, respond to and request takedowns for new threat quickly.

This will reduce the risk of financial losses and keep Singaporeans safe.

Ignoring a scam only saves you, reporting it saves everyone.

Happy Hunting!