Scam-resistant Filipinos

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

Thus goes an adage commonly seen nowadays on social media, often accompanying a story or a video clip, of someone reaping the unfortunate consequences of one’s foolish actions.

This same maxim, harsh though it may be to some, could be applied to those who—either because of their carelessness, greed, or a combination of both—have been victimized by online fraud and have come running to the authorities for redress.

Last week, an official of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said that online selling platforms, like Lazada and Shopee, which perform a crucial bridging function between buyer and seller, would be held equally liable as the vendors they host themselves if the latter are found guilty of selling “deceptive and defective” products.

According to the DTI, the No. 1 consumer complaint nowadays is about deceptive products, for instance, with customers ordering mobile phones but instead getting boxes with wet wipes, toilet paper, or rocks. Thus, the DTI warned that both the online platforms and sellers could be fined up to P300,000.

Maybe they should be. But maybe the wild, wild West that is the current landscape of e-commerce has a valuable lesson to teach some gullible Filipinos—lessons that, if taken to heart, will result not only in fewer incidences of fraud on the online marketplace but also less susceptibility of the public in other weightier matters of national importance.

For certain, online platforms, whether they be for selling goods and services or financial products, must do a better job of ensuring that whatever is offered on their sites, whether by themselves or by third-party vendors, is fully vetted to be authentic and legal.

But this task becomes exponentially more difficult in a digital marketplace that hosts millions upon millions of transactions each day executed in milliseconds by a buyer in one part of the country with a seller in another area or even overseas.

If it is difficult to police actual transactions in a physical marketplace where buyers and sellers meet face to face and the former can examine the goods with their own eyes and hands. Policing deals online easily becomes a near-impossible task.

But perhaps there is a lesson to be learned in all this.

Instead of authorities intervening to prevent fraud, or shifting the onus to the middleman, perhaps it is more efficient to prevent the problem at the outset rather than to solve it once it has progressed.

Instead of trying to plug all holes in a leaky dike as the proverbial Dutch boy was said to have done in an attempt to prevent his town from being flooded, perhaps a smarter, more enduring solution would be to build a better dike, or raise the elevation of the land, or build a floodway to redirect the water’s flow.

To this end, educating the citizenry is key.

Platforms like Lazada or Shopee have clearly marked sites (“Lazmall” and “Shopee Mall”) where the authenticity of products is guaranteed. Prices are slightly higher usually, of course, because this validation process requires extra effort on the part of the vendor and the middleman. Then there are other telltale signs like reviews and ratings posted by previous buyers, plus indications by the platforms of “preferred” vendors.

If a buyer, despite all these signs, insists on buying the latest “iPhone” from an unknown vendor offering it for only P5,000 when the market price is close to P100,000, that person probably deserves the scam that’s about to befall him.

Indeed, there is a troubling trend that has been evident in Philippine society in recent years where the public tends to take as gospel truth whatever they see online, whether they be less-than-factual pronouncements of their political leaders, marketing gimmicks by disreputable firms, or unbelievably cheap offers of whatever product or service being made by sellers, and even “fake news” or disinformation.

“If it’s on the internet, it must be true,” goes the tongue-in-cheek proverb uttered every now and then. It’s meant to be ironic, sarcastic, and humorous. Sadly, many Filipinos with a less-developed sense of all three really do think anything found on the internet must be true.

Ultimately, no amount of regulation can protect ill-informed people from themselves.

Yes, online platforms need to do more to combat all sorts of fraud that are proliferating in the digital sphere nowadays. But how about we citizens educate ourselves so that we become less gullible, too, whether it be to scams perpetrated via SMS or online selling platforms … and all the way to politicians who promise us the moon every three years or so?

Now THAT would be something, wouldn’t it?

It is nice to have frameworks that help protect us from our own gullibility, but what’s better is a mindset that tells us at the back of our heads when we see an offer that’s too good to be true: “Caveat emptor!” “Let the buyer beware!”

That is the ultimate protection against being scammed.