Telecom operators must help combat fraudsters

Chinese telecom fraud suspects are escorted off an aircraft by the police at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, April 30, 2016. A total of 97 Chinese telecom fraud suspects, including 32 Taiwanese, were sent back from Malaysia under the escort of Chinese police on Saturday. The suspects are involved in more than 100 major transnational telecom frauds related to over 20 provincial areas in Chinese mainland. [Photo/Xinhua]

Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old woman from a rural village in East China's Shandong province, died last week of a heart attack reportedly caused by her distress at being fleeced of nearly 10,000 yuan ($1,500).

The high school graduate had been enrolled by a university in neighboring Jiangsu province, and the money was what the financially strained family had saved to pay for her tuition fees.

The tragedy has once again brought telecom scams into the spotlight.

Today telecom scams have become part of daily life, and anyone can be targeted by fraudsters, who employ all forms of tricks.

Every day people are bombarded with phone calls or short messages claiming that they have hit the jackpot, defaulted on utility fees, or even been put under police investigation in a criminal case that requires cooperation to prove their innocence.

Due to massive theft of personal information, an act criminalized only last year, many people fall prey to imposters who can easily get personal information from the underground market for such info.

Lured by illusory gains or scared out of their wits, the gullible or those who feel threatened send money to the swindlers' accounts, or worse hand over their bank information.

China reportedly recorded nearly 600,000 telecom scam cases last year, involving up to 22 billion yuan. The number of recorded cases has increased by 70 percent each year since 2011.

And, of the cases reported, less than 5 percent have been actually solved. Even in the solved cases, the stolen money has rarely been retrieved.

In recent years, the police have intensified their efforts to combat telecom fraud by cooperating with their counterparts in foreign countries to target fraudsters overseas and repatriating suspects back to China to stand trial. But this is not just a task for the police. The telecom carriers also have an essential role to play.

For example, more than 90 percent of telecom scams reportedly involve false numbers created by fraudsters using software. Yet telecom carriers have apparently failed to plug this telecom security loophole.

Also, although telecom service providers have been required by the national regulator to verify the identity of users since 2013, the process has been slow, with more than 100 million users still registered to false accounts. Certain telecom bands sold to sub-contractors do not even require real-name registration.

There is a lot more to be done to put an end to telecom scams, and Xu's death highlights the urgency of fighting the fraudsters.