OPINION
Sir Bob Jones
nopunchespulled.com
Currently, Kiwis are losing nearly 200 million dollars annually to scams. It is an extraordinary amount which testifies to the decline of our newspapers’ readership, they regularly publishing warnings against accepting plausible sounding messages purporting to come mainly from banks, but also other activities.
Half a century back virtually every household had a daily newspaper delivered and people were thus better informed. But alas, today in an age of cell phone obsession and pervading ignorance plus an obsession with social media, that’s no longer the case.
Both the government and the banks employ large numbers of people working on ways to overcome this problem but to date, they’re fighting a losing battle.
What irritates me are the regular newspaper accounts of victims protesting at their banks refusal to compensate them for their personal gullibility in authorising the payments.
In the interim, there’s no doubt the scamsters are winning and I anticipate the total losses will continue to climb in the foreseeable future.
One elementary step would be for the government to deliver a brochure to every household, warning against seemingly plausible email and other electronic communications and providing one’s bank details. Large scale fraud, thanks to digital dependency is now a huge international industry.
Bankrupt North Korea survives on it, its clever state computer operators last year cleaning up billions scamming the idiotic Bitcoin boom.
We’re certainly living in alarming times. Thank God for sport to maintain our sanity.
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