Online game players were top target for scammers during China’s coronavirus lockdown
- Fraud cases tracked by the platform soared 47 per cent year on year to 3,243 from January 24 to March 13, when the outbreak wreaked havoc on China
- The biggest group of victims were young online game players, who reported 550 cases
China’s gamers were the largest group of victims amid a spike in internet scams during the country's coronavirus outbreak as millions of quarantined people turned to online games to alleviate boredom.
Liewang Platform, a website where Chinese internet users can report online fraud cases, found that scammers were out in force during the outbreak, which has so far sickened more than 81,000 in China and resulted in almost 3,300 local deaths.
Fraud cases tracked by the platform soared 47 per cent year on year to 3,243 from January 24 to March 13, the period when the pandemic wreaked havoc on China and saw hundreds of millions of people confined to their homes.
The biggest group of victims were young online game players, who reported 550 cases, according to an analysis of the Liewang data by Qihoo 360 Technology, a Chinese internet security company.
Online fraudsters are always quick to exploit the vulnerable but the coronavirus outbreak, which saw a huge spike in the number of people turning to mobile games to alleviate boredom, delivered an even larger pool of potential victims among China’s 800 million internet users.
A typical scam in these cases would involve the sale of a game account or game assets at very low prices, which then turn out to be fake.
