KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia ranks an unwanted number one in cell phone numbers breached ahead of the likes of Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Korea, according to a report.
Gogolook 2022 Annual Fraud Report unveiled that 73 per cent of cell phone numbers, which was equivalent to more than 21 million people in Malaysia, were leaked or sold to scammers.
Besides cell phone numbers, the report also stated that the top private information leaks were login passwords and names for Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand, followed by address, country, date of birth and email leaks.
Private information leaked was often the first step leading to fraud or scam cases.
According to Whoscall, which is powered by Gogolook, a 100 million download caller ID application with the largest database in East Asia and Southeast Asia, the company had identified over 405.4 million scam calls and messages that took place globally in 2022.
"Results also showed that scammers prioritise text messages for high penetration rates due to its low costs feature which contributed to 76 per cent of messages being used as the "first contact" in fraud cases.
"This is exceptionally true, with 95 per cent of fraud attacks in Japan and up to 80 per cent of fraud attacks in Taiwan, Korea, and Malaysia using messages instead of calls," Whoscall said.
To fight against fraud effectively, Malaysia deployed new reporting systems through its National Scam Response Centre where the public can report fraud cases by dialing the hotline 997.
Recently, the Royal Malaysian Police Malaysia collaborated with Whoscall to enhance the fraud number database.
The collaboration involves fraud number database sharing from the police's CCID portal to Whoscall data system making it the most updated and reliable caller ID application for Malaysians to protect themselves against fraud crimes.
Moving forward, Gogolook said the public needed to be aware of the current modus operandi of scammers from time to time.
For instance, in Malaysia, the emerging scam type is inquired to receive OTP authentication codes, it said.
"At times, it can be tough to differentiate scams but with technology, you can now download Whoscall as your first line of defense against scammers as it screens all incoming messages and calls through its proprietary database with over 1.6 billion phone number entries in real-time globally," it added.