Scams in Southeast Asia: When Self-Regulation is Not Enough
David Lam
Social media companies cannot be trusted to police the scams they profit from. Some government intervention is needed.

David Lam
Social media companies cannot be trusted to police the scams they profit from. Some government intervention is needed.
Brandon Tan Jun Wen
The adoption of scambaiting Large Language Models (LLM) could give regional governments a decisive edge against scam syndicates, but such Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven anti-scam measures come with their own challenges.
Stephen Olson
China and the US have reasons to work together to tackle the scourge of cyberfraud in Southeast Asia. The problem, however, is that their geopolitical rivalry gets in the way.
Surachanee Sriyai
Online scams and digital-enabled human trafficking have escalated into complex transnational operations. An estimated 220,000 people were coerced into scam compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar in 2023 alone. A holistic, people-centred strategy is urgently needed. Solutions must include economic inclusion, social safety nets, digital literacy, and international cooperation to tackle root vulnerabilities.
Brandon Tan Jun Wen
To combat a rising transnational scourge, the region’s governments can augment non-governmental efforts to detect, rescue and repatriate victims of increasingly sophisticated overseas ‘job’ scam operations run by cyber syndicates.