China Digital
Top 8 Scams in China to Watch Out for (2018)
From oldskool scams to WeChat scams – people are still falling for this every single day.
With the rapidly increasing number of online transactions in China, the persisting problem of counterfeit money scams in China may now be less of a problem than it was before. But other scams are on the rise.
Although people are now less vulnerable to scams involving cash money, services as WeChat wallet and Alipay are also not without peril. Over the years, scammers have developed numerous ways to cheat people and steal money from WeChat or Alipay wallets.
From infecting smartphones with viruses, to letting people “voluntarily” hand over their personal information, scammers have found ways to trick people from all ages and all layers of society.
As a follow-up to an earlier top 10 we did on scams in China, What’s on Weibo has compiled a list of 8 scams that are recently trending on social media or in the Chinese newspapers.
#1 WeChat Scams: Hacking Accounts
With over 800 million users of WeChat Pay in China, WeChat users are a lucrative target for scammers. In recent years, there have been various cases of WeChat scams, in which hackers of private accounts pretend to be a friend or family member, and convince others to send them money.
Last summer, the news went viral of Chinese parents becoming a victim of scammers pretending to be their children.
Image via http://www.sohu.com/a/201988031_689129
These hackers, using the children’s accounts, told ‘their parents’ that they had to attend a special course or lecture, often held by professors from renowned universities such as Tsinghua or Beijing University. Once the scammer convinced the parent to pay for the extra curriculum activity, the scammers send the contact information of the “teachers” in charge of the event.
Once the parents added the “teachers'” to WeChat and transferred the money, the scammers continued to get parents to pay for all sorts of things such as service fees, registration fees, supply fees, etc.
In other more extreme examples, parents were asked to follow a link to complete the payment. The link installed a virus onto the parent’s phone, allowing the scammer to have full access to the victim’s WeChat wallet.
#2 Voice Scams: Imitation Champions
Another rising problem that China and many other countries are currently facing is the issue of so-called ‘voice scams.’ Often done through WeChat, scammers collect a person’s voice messages and then pretend to be this person by imitating his or her voice.
The scammers will then make a fake WeChat account that is an exact copy of the one they are imitating. They will contact family members and friends of the person they are imitating, and ask to borrow money. Because the voices sound so much alike, they often win the trust of people and get them to send the money.
Image via http://www.sohu.com/a/201988031_689129
In one extreme case, a young man’s voice was imitated so well that scammers were able to convince the man’s mother that her son was abducted. In a complete panic, the mother transferred the demanded ransom.
In all cases, the police advise people to always confirm face-to-face with the other person before sending money. Additionally, they also warn people should be on their guard sharing voice messages or any other form of personal information with strangers.
#3 Delivery Scams: Too Many Packages
As easy and convenient online shopping might seem, it is not without danger. Just as with WeChat scams, there are many ways in which scammers will try to find weak points within the system.
One of the issues that makes people more vulnerable to scams within the world of online shopping is that many people order so many products online, that they are more likely to believe that a package is theirs – even if they have never actually ordered it.
The most common online shopping scam involves “cash on delivery,” where the courier asks people to pay upon delivery. Once opening the packaging, people discover their package is actually empty.
In another version, scammers will first call the victim pretending to be their neighbor. They will ask them to do them a favor and accept a package, since they are not able to be home on time to accept it themselves. This way, people are even more likely to accept the package.
In yet another scam, often referred to as the “compensation scam,” scammers call customers and pretend to be employees of a delivery company. On the phone, they will tell that one of their carriers accidentally lost or damaged the ordered product and that they want to compensate for the loss. The only thing the victim has to do is to fill out an online “compensation form” for which personal information and bank information is required. With this information, the scammers can easily break into their victim’s bank account.
In some cases, scammers ask customers to add a WeChat account so they can be compensated for their ‘loss’. In the final step, they will require them to scan a QR-code, or click a link, and to transfer a small ‘service’ fee. Once they have transferred the fee, a virus will be installed on their phone, allowing the scammers to access their WeChat wallet.
Delivery companies advise their customers not to accept any package if they are not sure they have actually ordered it. With cash delivery packages, customers are advised to always check the package before sending the courier away.
About lost or damaged packages: delivery companies will never ask you to fill out a compensation form or share any personal or bank information. In case the delivery company loses or damages your order, the company you bought it from will then inform you and transfer the money back to your bank account.
#4 Catching Red Envelopes
Snatching ‘red envelopes’, qiǎng hóngbāo (抢红包) in Chinese, originated from China’s long-standing tradition of giving red envelopes to children to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
However, as the tradition of giving red envelopes is transforming from offline to online, the new phenomenon of ‘snatching red envelopes’ has also become more ubiquitous.
Through WeChat, people can send red envelopes to a group of friends: the (few) people who are first in opening that envelope will then receive an amount of money. Companies often use this feature as a marketing tool.
Scammers also make use of this red envelope craze. The ‘red envelop scam’ starts with a message via one of one’s WeChat contacts, reading something like: “I just discovered a group and the host of the group is going crazy! He keeps sending red envelopes! Add yourself to the group and snatch some envelopes.” This message will often be followed by a message telling you that you will be rewarded money when you add more people to the group.
Image via http://www.tanmizhi.com/html/4445.html
Within a few minutes, the group chat has added hundreds of people. As members increase, the group owner will encourage people to add more people to the group by keeping on sending red envelopes. In the meantime, the group owner will send out a message saying that the ones who already opened an envelope are registered. In case they do not add ten people to the group within 30 minutes they will be kicked out. As for those who add 20 people to the group within half an hour, they will be rewarded even more money.
This way, people will keep adding contacts to the group. And because it is not allowed to talk in the group, people are also not able to warn each other of its potential dangers, because, at this point, the red envelopes will actually change into QR codes – the group owner will post a message saying that his transactions surpassed the transactions limit of the day and that if people want to continue receiving money, they will have to scan the QR-code and pay the symbolic amount of one yuan ($0.14). If they do so, they are promised to be rewarded with a high amount of money.
Once these people pay the one yuan, they have been scammed: through the QR code, the scammers have installed a virus into their WeChat, allowing them to empty their WeChat wallet. There are many versions to this kind of “red envelope” and “free money” scams. To avoid being scammed, it is best to remember that there is no such thing as getting money for nothing – there’s always a price to be paid.
#5 Winning Lottery-Ticket Scam
For the “winning lottery ticket scam,” scammers play with people’s minds. And no matter how simple this trick may seem, it is a worldwide phenomenon.
The scam starts with the victim finding a lottery ticket that has intentionally been placed somewhere. Since the owner of the lottery ticket is nowhere to be found, most people finding the ticket then call the number registered on the ticket to find out whether or not the ticket won a price. And, of course, they are told that the found ticket is indeed a ‘prize-winning’ ticket.
Because people, at this point, are so excited about their unexpected ‘luck’, they often no longer keep their mind straight. The scammer on the phone will inform the lucky finder that they only need to pay a handling fee before they can receive their prize money.
In some cases, the scammers even convince the victim to pay an income tax before receiving the prize money. Once the lucky winner paid the handling fee or income tax [via WeChat or Alipay], the connection will be cut off, and of course, the victim will never get the prize.
#6 Found Wallet Scam
You are walking outside, and suddenly you find a wallet on the streets – the owner is already out of sight. As you stand still with the wallet in your hand, a stranger comes up to you accusing you of stealing money from that found wallet.
It is a scam that frequently occurs in China, and it is easy to imagine that someone who just found a wallet might feel awkward about the situation, especially when accused of trying to steal the money inside of the wallet.
While explaining that they did not intend on trying to steal money, the stranger will intimidate the finder to give him some of the cash inside to settle the matter. Many people will do so in order to avoid a public scene.
But that is not the end of the scam, as the ‘owner’ of the wallet will then suddenly pop up, asking for his wallet, and discovering that some money inside is missing. The ‘finder’ will then compensate for that loss to get themselves out of the humiliating situation.
Obviously, the two men – the ‘bad guy’ demanding the money and the person who lost the wallet – work together in setting people up like this. Police advise people who find a wallet to turn it in at the closest police station.
Netease has reconstructed the scam on a video here.
#7 Fake Job Scam
One of the most common scams in China nowadays is the so-called “fake job scam.” Scammers will place fake job ads, and meet responders outside a company office for their ‘job interview.’
In most cases, the applicant is ‘hired’ immediately after the job interview. But before they can get to work, they first have to pass a medical test at a designated ‘research center.’ The victim is then told that he has to pay for the transportation and medical fees, and that the money will be reimbursed at the end of the first working month.
In many cases, victims also pay for service costs and forward a deposit for cards that allow them into the office, etc. When all these fees are paid, the ‘company’ can no longer be contacted and is suddenly untraceable.
To avoid people from getting tricked into these fake job scams, police advise to only reply to job ads with a registered phone number and official company address.
#8 Trap Loans: A Mountain of Loans
The problem of ‘trap loans’ has received much media attention in China over recent years. Earlier this year the story of one woman went viral; she borrowed 2,000 yuan ($292) and ended up with a 150,000 yuan ($21.872) debt two months later.
She is just of among many victims of China’s “trap loans.” In various other cases reported by the media, people end up in such huge debts and depression, that they take their own lives.
Scammers specifically target people who are temporarily short of cash. It often starts with an individual lender offering a quick loan, only for a few days, in the name of a small loaning company (小额贷款公司). Once the person tells the loaning company they need credit, a lender will come up with a contract that has blank spaces in them. The contract is often so long and complicated that people don’t read it through carefully enough.
When the contract is signed, the loaning company will insert extra information into the blank spaces of the signed contract. They will, for example, change the time you are allowed to borrow money, the interest rate, or the name of the lender.
In the next phase, the loaning company will purposely make the borrower breach the contract by, for example, temporarily being out of service or unreachable, so that the borrower is not able to pay off his debts as recorded in the agreement. They will then face the sum of accumulated interest on the borrowed money, and fines for overdue payments.
Around this time, the lender will introduce the borrowers to another loaning company where they can take out more loans to pay off the debts of the first contract. This can go on for many years and many contracts. The borrower will not be able to repay the entire sum of borrowed money, so keeps on paying huge interest rates and fines for overdue payments.
There have been reports of trap loans in various forms such as campus loans, where students are tricked into ‘easy money loans’ by on-campus advertisements; or naked loans, where scammers demand people to send a (partly) nude picture of themselves holding their ID as collateral. Often this photo will later be used to blackmail a person.
Want to read more? Also check out our previous ‘Top 10 Scams to Watch Out For in China‘.
By Gabi Verberg
Follow @whatsonweibo
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us.
©2018 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com
China Digital
In China’s “Kua Kua” Chat Groups, People Pay to Be Praised [Updated]
Money can’t buy you love, but in these ‘kua kua’ groups, they can buy you praise.
First published
A new phenomenon has become a hot topic on Chinese social media these days. ‘Kua kua’ groups (夸夸群) are chat groups where people share some things about themselves – even if they are negative things – and where other people will always tell them how great they are, no matter what.
Kua kua groups (夸 ‘kuā‘ literally means ‘praise’) have become all the rage in China. People seem to love them for the mere fact that it makes them feel good about themselves.
The format is clear. Person A tells about something that is on their minds, and asks people for positive feedback. Person B, C, and D will then come forward and tell them how good or pretty they are, sometimes based on their profile photo.
One could say: “Hi everyone, I’ve just turned down a job offer, but now my future is full of uncertainty, please compliment me.” Then people in the chat group will respond and say things such as: “You look like the type of person who knows exactly what they want.”
The Kua kua praise group phenomenon allegedly began within the online community of Xi’an Jiaotong University – although some claim it was Shanghai’s Fudan University – when one person asked others in a chat group to compliment them. The idea started to compliment and praise others, and so a trend was born; first, in university (BBS) chat groups, and now on WeChat and beyond the realm of universities.
The phenomenon has been around for at least six years, but only recently started gaining widespread attention on Chinese social media. According to China’s Toutiao News, virtually every college now has its own ‘praise group.’
But the praise does not always come for free. Although many (college-based) chat groups are free to join, people who want to be complimented and are not yet a member of an existing group can join Kua kua groups when they pay for it. On Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao, there are various online shops that sell a ‘Praise group’ membership starting from 50 yuan ($7,5) per person, going up to 188 yuan ($28).
The time of praise is limited to five minutes unless you pay more. The quality of the compliments you’ll be getting also depends on how much you pay. Some groups allegedly consist of “students of great talent,” and the number of people complimenting one person could reach up to 500 people.
The contents of the praise could literally be anything. A simple “I want to be praised” comment could get a variety of reactions from “your hat looks nice” to “the fact that you’re so honest and straightforward about what you want is something that is hard to come across in this day and age,” to “you used a period mark [at the end of your sentence], you must be someone who is very persistent in reaching your goals.”
The fact that the “Kua kua” phenomenon is such a success in China might relate to its culture, where humility and modesty are considered ideal in day-to-day communications. When given a compliment, it is common in China to deny it or to suggest that the person giving the compliment is much better than they are (also see Cheng 2003, 30).
These chat groups, however, break away from the dominant cultural interactions: people don’t have to be polite in responding to the compliments and can wallow in the praise they paid for.
Although not as big as the “Kua Kua” group phenomenon, these kinds of groups also exist in the English-language social media sphere. On Reddit’s “Toast Me” page, for example, there are some 92,000 subscribers participating in asking and giving positive feedback to others, albeit unpaid.
The people giving compliments in the Chinese Kua kua groups are random people, some students, some staff of Taobao stores, who get hongbao, red envelopes with digital money gifts, for contributing to the group. According to some reports, some ‘customers’ end up staying the group and become a part of the team themselves.
We will follow up on this later: we booked a ‘five-minute praise session’ ourselves, but are still awaiting admission to the group…
Update: Our Kua Kua Experience
So what is the Kua kua experience like? We decided to try out for ourselves and purchased a 5-minute praise session through Taobao for 50 yuan ($7,5) from a seller that had a good rating.
After the purchase is completed, the seller will contact you with details asking for your WeChat ID. After adding, they will ask you what your ‘problem’ or issue is, and you will be put in a virtual queue until your turn comes up to be praised.
You’ll then be added to a WeChat group that has your name in the headline (ours was something like “Manya you can do it”) and that has around 200 participants.
The message posted by us was:
“Hello, I’m Manya (Dutch). I’ve been studying Chinese for more than ten years. In fact, I’m afraid to say it may even be more than 13 years, but I still often don’t understand what Beijing taxi drivers are saying. Even studying every day won’t help. I’ve been learning for so many years, yet I often still don’t understand what the old people in Beijing are saying. It’s a bit embarrassing. I think my Chinese is still not good enough. I can’t understand the ‘crosstalk’ [comedy sketches] during the Spring Festival Gala at all. It makes me feel a little dispirited.”
Within a matter of seconds, the screen then just fills up with positive feedback and emoji. There are dozens of comments, and they almost go too fast to read them all.
Some of the responses:
“You’re great, and even I don’t understand Beijing taxi drivers.”
“Stay confident in yourself!”
“You’re so cool.”
“You can type so many Chinese characters, who’d say your Chinese is not good enough?!”
“Manya, you’re so fantastic.”
“None of us understand what old people in Beijing are saying.”
“Chinese is just not easy to study, the fact that you’ve been doing it for so long already shows how great you are.”
“It’s incredible that you’ve already come this far.”
“A woman who is so motivated about studying really moves me, you’re my role model, you make me want to study more English.”
During the praise session, the group leader will occasionally post a hongbao [envelope with money] for the participants to receive in return for their compliments.
After five minutes, the session ends, and the people will send out some last words of encouragement. The group leader will personally thank you for being part of the group, and later, you’ll be removed from the group as the people will move on to the next person who is waiting in line to be praised.
How does it feel to be praised by some 200 people, receiving hundreds of compliments? It’s overwhelming, and even though you know it’s all just an online mechanism, and that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you say, it still makes you glow a little bit inside.
Although some experts quoted by Chinese state media warn people not to rely on these praise groups too much, there does not seem to be much harm in allowing yourself to be complimented for some minutes from time to time.
Other people reviewing the same Kua kua group apparently feel the same: “I’m super satisfied, the result is amazing.”
By Manya Koetse and Miranda Barnes
Featured image via hexun.com.
References
Cheng, Winnie. 2003. Intercultural Communication. Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing.
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©2019 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
China Digital
China Youth Federation: Ban Minors from Live Streaming Platforms
If implemented, this would mean a big blow to China’s live streaming market.
First published
Chinese minors will no longer be able to do live streaming if it is up to the All-China Youth Federation (ACYF, 中国青联). The China Youth Federation submitted the proposal during the Two Sessions (Lianghui), China’s largest annual legislative meetings.
The China Youth Federation is an organization to represent China’s youth groups founded in 1949, that has the Communist Youth League of China as its core.
China’s live streaming market is booming. Sina News reports that some 425 million netizens used live streaming platforms in 2018. According to the Online Information Center of the Communist Youth League, Chinese minors are particularly active live streamers: 6.4% of live stream users are primary school students, 18.3% of them are junior high school students and 20.3% are senior high schoolers.
There are dozens of live streaming platforms in China, with this list of apps, including the short video & live stream platforms Douyin and Kuaishou, being among the most popular ones. If the law would be implemented, China’s thriving live streaming market would certainly suffer a big blow.
Earlier this week, Sixth Tone already reported that “protecting minors online” would be among one of the important themes discussed by tech leaders at the Two Sessions.
On Saturday, March 9, the hashtag “Proposal to Ban Minors from Engaging in Livestreaming” (#建议禁止未成年人担任网络主播#) [basically meaning “prohibiting minors from being online hosts”] became top trending on Weibo, attracting more than 180 million views. Various Chinese state media sources state that the live streaming industry is in “a state of chaos” and needs stricter control to protect minors, who could easily come into contact with “vulgar” and “inappropriate” content through live streaming platforms.
The ban could be realized by implementing stricter controls on the registration process of China’s various live-streaming networks. This could suggest that the measures would go beyond minors just being banned from live streaming themselves.
“I support this proposal, live streaming platforms are not appropriate for minors,” a popular comment said, with many Weibo users agreeing: “Young people should focus on their schoolwork instead.”
But not everyone agrees with stricter controls on China’s online platforms. One commenter wrote: “Officials can have multiple wives, rich people have multiple women, yet if common people watch live streams where some vulgar language or sensitive content occasionally pops up, then it’s not allowed.”
“What should be banned is vulgar content, not minor users,” others write.
Earlier this week, Beijing News reported that Yan Xiaohong (阎晓宏), director of the Chinese Copyright Association, also submitted a proposal relating to minors using the internet. Yan’s proposal goes much further than that of the ACYF: he suggests that special online platforms should be developed for minors, and argues that it is not good for China’s youth to be able to access the same online content as adults.
By Manya Koetse
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©2019 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
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