Raphael John-Lall

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pina­ka Con­sult­ing Ltd. Shi­va Bisses­sar, is alert­ing the pub­lic to the per­ils of on­line scams and is call­ing for pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship to treat with the im­pact of such ac­tiv­i­ty, which in­cludes fi­nan­cial crimes.

“On­line scams have both a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and fi­nan­cial ser­vices as­pect as­so­ci­at­ed with it, hence these in­dus­tries should col­lec­tive­ly seek to ad­dress same. There is sig­nif­i­cant work re­quired to­wards re­duc­ing on­line harms which may dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect the el­der­ly and youth,” he said.

In an in­ter­view, Bisses­sar told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian about two in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences he re­cent­ly at­tend­ed on these is­sues.

He par­tic­i­pat­ed in the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN) con­fer­ence in Prague, Czech Re­pub­lic in June and the In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum (IGF) in Nor­way that same month, ex­plain­ing that some of the key take­aways fo­cussed on on­line scams and fi­nan­cial crimes.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion Bisses­sar pro­vid­ed, Gabriel An­drews, co-chair of the Pub­lic Safe­ty Work­ing Group at ICANN and a Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) rep­re­sen­ta­tive, pro­vid­ed alarm­ing sta­tis­tics from the FBI’s In­ter­net Crime Com­plaint Cen­tre.

In 2024, the FBI re­ceived com­plaints from over 200 coun­tries, un­der­scor­ing the glob­al na­ture of cy­ber­crime. By com­plaint count, phish­ing is the most fre­quent form of crime re­port­ed, serv­ing as the ini­tial in­tru­sion vec­tor for many oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties.

How­ev­er, in terms of fi­nan­cial loss, in­vest­ment fraud, es­pe­cial­ly cryp­tocur­ren­cy in­vest­ment fraud, is by far the most dam­ag­ing cat­e­go­ry, ac­count­ing for over US$6.5 bil­lion in loss­es in the U.S. in 2024 alone. Oth­er es­ti­mat­ed loss­es for cat­e­gories of crimes in­clude:

• Busi­ness email com­pro­mise *$2.77 bil­lion

• Con­fi­dence/ro­mance*$672.01 mil­lion

• Gov­ern­ment im­per­son­ation*$405.62 mil­lion

• Ex­tor­tion*$143.19 mil­lion

• Phish­ing/spoof­ing*$70.01 mil­lion

• Ran­somware*$12.47 mil­lion

Speak­ing about the IGF Con­fer­ence, Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed sev­er­al ses­sions fo­cussed on the top­ic of on­line harms that chil­dren and ado­les­cents face.

“There was a ses­sion fo­cussing on the emerg­ing risk of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) en­abled deep fakes and how they are play­ing a role in kids be­ing fooled on­line by per­sons with ma­li­cious in­tent. Kids may be ma­nip­u­lat­ed to an ex­tent where they re­veal com­pro­mis­ing pic­tures of them­selves lead­ing to de­mands be­ing placed on them. So deep­fakes is an emerg­ing threat which is be­ing looked at glob­al­ly. Adults may al­so be fooled by deep­fakes.”

Emerg­ing trends

Both web­sites of the FBI and the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion in the Unit­ed States warn against ro­mance scams.

Bisses­sar al­so spoke about the emer­gence of trends like “ro­mance scams” where peo­ple look­ing for ro­man­tic love on­line are tricked of their mon­ey.

“Au­thor­i­ties have not­ed in­ci­dents in T&T to the ex­tent of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) putting out an ad­vi­so­ry on ro­mance scams. In this sit­u­a­tion, an el­der­ly per­son is scammed by some­one pre­tend­ing to be some­one else. The trust can lead to that vic­tim send­ing mon­ey or even go­ing away to vis­it that per­son think­ing they are vis­it­ing a re­al per­son.”

He said un­for­tu­nate­ly, he could not say how preva­lent some of these crimes are lo­cal­ly be­cause of a lack of da­ta.

“We do not have prop­er re­search, prop­er da­ta col­lec­tion, prop­er clas­si­fi­ca­tion of in­ci­dents. For ex­am­ple, when an in­ci­dent oc­curs is it clas­si­fied as cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, is it clas­si­fied as an in­ci­dent of ex­tor­tion? We do not know or at least I do not know about this lev­el of re­port­ing.”

He al­so said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the au­thor­i­ties would work with the so­cial me­dia plat­forms for ex­am­ple to iden­ti­fy scams to help with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dents.

“I am not cer­tain if we have that lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion with the so­cial me­dia plat­forms to get that that type of res­o­lu­tion on is­sues when they are re­port­ed do­mes­ti­cal­ly. I be­lieve the de­vel­oped world is at­tuned to the on­line harms that ex­ist on the in­ter­net. There is greater aware­ness of these harms, and I would say there is a bet­ter re­sponse when an in­ci­dent is re­port­ed.”

He asked if there is such an in­ci­dent in T&T what au­thor­i­ty or body does the vic­tim go to.

“For ex­am­ple, what is the pro­to­col to re­port an in­ci­dent. Are vic­tims aware of what they should do when an in­ci­dent oc­curs? What ma­te­r­i­al they should try to keep from that in­ci­dent and pro­duce it to the com­pe­tent au­thor­i­ties to fol­low up. That is a key as­pect of it - the fol­low up when some­thing is re­port­ed – it is im­por­tant be­cause fam­i­lies would like to know what is the sta­tus of a par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent that took place. That is some­thing that needs to be looked at or we need to de­vel­op fur­ther.”

He called for there to be more ad­vo­ca­cy on some of these is­sues in T&T as less at­ten­tion is paid to them that in the de­vel­oped world.

“That ad­vo­ca­cy then needs to re­sult in ac­tion. We need pro­grammes fo­cussed on build­ing aware­ness to be put in place. How­ev­er, that’s not all as we al­so need to look at this from a pol­i­cy and leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry point of view.”

He high­light­ed that fund­ing for var­i­ous di­men­sions of re­duc­ing on­line harm is al­so im­por­tant.

“Recog­ni­tion is re­quired that with in­creased in­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture and ac­cess, there needs to be com­ple­men­tary at­ten­tion paid to re­duc­ing on­line harms. Both the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure their net­works are not be­ing used for ne­far­i­ous pur­pos­es. Hence, should they be more di­rect­ly con­tribut­ing to re­duc­ing on­line harms? So­cial me­dia plat­form rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the IGF spoke of their abil­i­ty to work with au­thor­i­ties to build aware­ness in a co­or­di­nat­ed man­ner and to as­sist law en­force­ment, but how do de­vel­op­ing na­tions avail them­selves of this?”

He point­ed out that some de­vel­oped na­tions are look­ing in­to reg­u­lat­ing the le­gal age at which chil­dren may be able to ac­cess so­cial me­dia.

“Aus­tralia is look­ing at age 16, Nor­way is al­so look­ing at age 15. How­ev­er, YouTube may be con­sid­ered so­cial me­dia but it can al­so be used for ed­u­ca­tion con­tent, so where do you draw the line? The age ver­i­fi­ca­tion mech­a­nism as well, that is a tech­ni­cal con­trol that some coun­tries say needs to be in­sti­tut­ed but that in it­self presents a chal­lenge be­cause some of these things could po­ten­tial­ly be by­passed. How do you cre­ate an ef­fec­tive age ver­i­fi­ca­tion tool to be used by some of these plat­forms to en­sure that the in­di­vid­u­als ac­cess­ing these plat­forms are of an ap­pro­pri­ate age.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said that re­duc­ing on­line harms is a mul­ti­fac­eted is­sue.

“We need to look at this from var­i­ous an­gles. If we are de­liv­er­ing in­ter­ven­tions and aware­ness to par­ents, teach­ers and kids - what is the most ef­fec­tive way to do that? Is it through on­line train­ing or to phys­i­cal­ly go in­to schools and de­liv­er phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tions and aware­ness build­ing ses­sions? What works best and what works best for our re­gion? Cus­tomised con­tent may need to be cre­at­ed and de­liv­ered.”

He al­so in­formed that the Caribbean IGF is sched­uled to take place from Au­gust 20 to 22 in Cu­ba and re­duc­ing on­line harms will be dis­cussed ad­dress­ing ar­eas such as pol­i­cy, im­ple­men­ta­tion and fund­ing.