WeChat Is App of Choice for China's E-Scammers, Supreme Court Says
Xu Wei
DATE:  Nov 20 2019
/ SOURCE:  yicai
WeChat Is App of Choice for China's E-Scammers, Supreme Court Says WeChat Is App of Choice for China's E-Scammers, Supreme Court Says

(Yicai Global) Nov. 19 -- WeChat overtook QQ as the most frequently used vehicle for China's online scams, as fraud cases in which cyber-criminals exploit tech titan Tencent Holdings' ubiquitous messaging and payment app made up over half of the total last year, Sun Fuhui, deputy director of the Information Center of the Supreme People's Court, told a press briefing as she released a corresponding report today.

Some 31.52 percent of online flimflam schemes involve identity theft, and the proportion in which criminals use personnel recruitment as bait rose greatly last year, she noted, adding women and acquaintances are the usual victims. Nearly one-fifth of online fraud was perpetrated after criminals gained access to personal information, China News Service reported.

Scams which use the internet as a medium are seriously on the rise, Sun warned. Online hustles were only 7.67 percent of total frauds in 2017, but jumped to 17.6 percent last year, with China's southeastern coast the area hardest hit.

Courts across China sentenced defendants in over 48,000 online crime cases between 2016 to last year, she said, continuing that both the number and their ratio among total criminal filings are rising by the year. The incidence of cyber-crime case grew significantly last year, up about 51 percent from 2017.

Editor: Ben Armour

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Keywords:   WeChat,E-Scams