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Elderly in Thailand to Get Anti-Scam Education as Cybercrime Explodes

Elderly in Thailand to Get Anti-Scam Education as Cybercrime Explodes

Alarmed by research indicating that the elderly are the most vulnerable to fraudsters, Thailand’s Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and CIB cybercrime investigators will collaborate with partners to provide digital literacy to senior people nationwide.

The minister, Varawut Silpa-archa, stated that more than 13 million people, or almost 20% of the Thai population, are above 60. Over the next 20 years, the elderly will account for 30% of the population. However, digital media literacy among the elderly remains low.

He referenced a recent study conducted by the Intelligence Centre for Senior Media Literacy (ICEML) at Mahidol University with the help of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth), which discovered that more senior individuals fall prey to scammers.

About 70.53% were duped into revealing their personal information, while 22.40% chose to purchase low-quality products.

The ministry then collaborated with ThaiHealth, Mahidol University, and Tammapun Company to launch a media literacy programme for the elderly. Mr Varawut said the course would be administered at 2,456 elderly-specific schools.

According to Benjamaporn Limpisathian, a senior assistant manager at ThaiHealth, the curriculum will help improve media literacy skills for the elderly so they can use media securely and advocate for constructing an academic centre on media literacy for the old.

Assoc Prof Nuntiya Dounghummes, president of ICEML, stated that digital media literacy among the elderly is critical to preventing them from being victims of scammers in the future.

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Types of Cybercrime in Thailand

The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) has identified five types of cybercrime that have been common in the past year and warns people to avoid being duped online. The first concerns contact centre scammers, who they claim are always devising new ways to fool customers.

Some mimic state officials and use bogus phone numbers to intimidate victims. According to the CIB, some scammers send SMS with a link to lure victims into giving up access to their bank accounts.

Another example concerns online shopping scammers who put up phoney retail websites to defraud victims. Some businesses solicit customers to transfer money online for things they will never receive. According to the CIB, in some circumstances, the goods received by customers are counterfeit or of poor quality and do not correspond to what was represented.

A “hybrid method” fraud involves victims being drawn into a relationship with a scammer before being asked to invest their money in a bogus investment scheme. A CIB cybercrime investigator reported that victims are frequently cheated.

Romance scammers build phoney profiles on dating websites or contact victims through social media. Scammers form relationships with victims to earn their trust before fabricating claims and demanding money.

There are also job offer frauds targeting job seekers. Victims are frequently duped into handing over money and providing personal information. According to a cybercrime investigator, some scammers promise high-paying jobs but need victims to pay upfront fees.

cybercrime Thailand

Combating Cybercrime is Challenging

Victims are promised high-paying positions abroad but must first pay exorbitant fees. They are never, however, sent abroad as promised, according to the cybercrime investigator at CIB.

From March 1 of last year until December 20, more than 314,000 complaints were submitted to the police. There were 160,819 shopping scams, 50,536 job scams, 43,193 loan scams, 32,501 investment scams, and 27,620 contact centre scams.

According to Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) commissioner Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop Bhuridej, internet scams are expected to be a significant trend this year as people increasingly rely on online technology for daily activities such as shopping and leisure.

Combating cybercrime is challenging because scammers utilize technology to perpetrate crimes and hide their tracks, said Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop.

He said that scammers employ new tools and tactics, such as SIM boxes and Voice over IP (VoIP), to carry out their criminal activities, complicating law enforcement efforts to combat cybercrime.

In addition, law enforcement organizations confront three additional problems in countering cybercrime.

First, internet scammers typically operate within Myanmar’s border areas, where the fighting between ethnic rebels and government troops makes it difficult for Thai officials to investigate them, he added. He warned that scammers will also find safe havens in armed group-controlled areas, such as Laukkaing in northern Myanmar.

Second, he claimed that online scams result from complex criminal networks. He stated they are comprised of transnational corporations, making it difficult for authorities to coordinate and locate their operations.

cybercrime Thailand

To Stay One Step Ahead of Criminals

Finally, he noted that legal and jurisdictional difficulties complicate matters. Because online scams have no borders, worldwide cooperation is necessary to prosecute these crooks.

Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop established the Anti-internet Scam Operation Centre (AOC) 1441 hotline to tackle internet scams. It proactively brings together banking, internet service providers, law enforcement, and telecom authorities to address public safety concerns.

He said the program aims to improve coordination, database management, and information sharing, adding that the police also leverage technology to expedite their work and combat cybercrime.

He stated that technology is important in managing complaints, obtaining intelligence, assessing criminal patterns, and connecting with other organizations, such as banks, internet service providers, and telecom carriers.

To stay one step ahead of criminals, police are attempting to establish networks and connections with law enforcement agencies to share knowledge, investigation tactics, and information regarding illegal activity.

He stated that the police must refresh their expertise through “unlearn, relearn, and reskill” to face the shifting problems posed by emerging dangers such as Bitcoin, the dark web, and deep fakes.

According to Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop, changing organizational structures is critical to boosting law enforcement organizations’ efficacy in combating cybercrime.

As the CIB commissioner, he has been tasked by the prime minister to act as the AOC’s secretary-general and to convene a working group to collaborate with other agencies and establish effective ways for combating cybercrime.

“Because crime has crossed borders, it is important to strengthen regional and worldwide partnerships and coordination. Victims in Thailand can be targeted by criminals operating in other countries, and we require a strong ally to combat crime,” he said.

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Organized Workshops at Schools

He stated that the public may actively participate in the battle against cybercrime, saying that the CIB has used social media to warn people about online fraud, spot scams, and encourage them to report suspicious activity.

He noted that CIB mobile applications will be available soon.

While online scams remain a huge threat this year, violent crimes such as mass shootings are rising all across the world, raising considerable worries for authorities and the general public, he said.

Incidents like these are often unanticipated and have a terrible impact on communities. Therefore, the CIB has organized workshops at schools and private businesses to assist them in understanding the risks and devise a plan to deal with such events while remaining safe, he said.

The agency has also collaborated with the Police General Hospital to monitor the mental health of its employees and provide early diagnosis and treatment, which is critical given the stressful nature of their work, he said.

He said it has also cracked down on illegal weaponry, leading to confiscating weapons and arresting several suspects.

Nearly 60,000 Chinese Tourists Cancel Thailand Visit After Siam Paragon Mall Shooting

Unrest and Potential Violence

The shooting at the Siam Paragon shopping mall in October of last year was one of the worst days in recent violent crime history. A 14-year-old child is suspected of randomly shooting individuals, killing one Thai and two foreign nationals and injuring five others.

The incident occurred just after the first anniversary of a shooting in Nong Bua Lam Phu, in which a former police officer assaulted a nursery with a knife and gun, killing 24 children and 12 adults.

The Siam Paragon incident has resulted in tighter gun control measures, including a prohibition on the importation of guns and imitation firearms.

Concerning southern unrest and potential violence in the capital, Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop stated that the RTP’s forward command has surveillance systems in place and monitors the activities of questionable individuals.

The CIB has directed units, including the Crime Suppression Division, Marine Police, and Highway Police, to work closely with local police.

Improving data collecting is one of the primary areas the CIB is working on to combat crime, according to Pol Lt Gen Jirabhop, who envisions the CIB as a data-driven organization.

He stated that extensive and reliable data allows the CIB to better analyze trends and patterns, make plans, and deploy resources to address them efficiently.

Poor data collecting can result in insufficient or erroneous data, making it impossible for police to undertake effective data analytics, he explained, adding that the CIB has collaborated with the Thailand Institute of Justice to create a robust and comprehensive crime database.

He stated that the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes, produced by UNODC, provides a complete framework for producing criminal justice statistics and will be utilized as a model.

He stated that the CIB may use crime data to get useful insights and improve its crime prevention, suppression, and investigation efforts.

“Technology allows criminals to target people from anywhere, and new technologies make it more difficult to track them down.” The public should arm itself with knowledge. “It is the best and first line of defense against crime,” he explained.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

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Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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