A REPORT recently released by Tencent shows that Shenzhen is among the top five cities in China regarding the amount of money being swindled from users of mobile payment services, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported Sunday.

    According to the report, the amount being swindled out of mobile payment users in Chengdu was the highest among all Chinese cities last year, followed by Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

    Based on the number of complaints being reported, Haikou — capital of Hainan Province — had the most swindlers defrauding others via mobile payments, followed by Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen and Chaozhou.

    The report noted that nearly 60 percent of victims in Shenzhen were male, while 71 percent of the victims in 2015 were male.

    More than 60 percent of the victims in Shenzhen were aged between 21 and 30, while the proportion of victims between 11 and 20 years old was 9.17 percent.

    According to the report, nearly 30 percent of victims in Shenzhen lost money after shopping online. For instance, some victims tried to buy low-priced products online, but the sellers disappeared or sent counterfeits to the buyers after receiving their money.

    Additionally, 21.9 percent of victims in Shenzhen were cheated into paying for some products after swindlers promised to return their money and offer them rewards for boosting their sales volume. These victims never got their money back.

    The report also noted that some victims were cheated into paying 0.1 yuan (US$0.015) each time they got a red envelop on their mobile phones, but the money actually went to the swindlers’ accounts and never came back.

    Some swindlers took advantage of new rules introduced by the national authorities late last year, which enable transferors to revoke money transfers via ATM within 24 hours as the money would be “frozen” by the bank during that period.

    These swindlers stole people’s social media accounts and borrowed money from their friends. They won the trust of their victims by sending screenshots of money transfers on ATMs to prove that they had transferred money to victims’ bank accounts, but then revoked the ATM transfers immediately after victims transferred money to them via mobile payments.

    It’s also worth noting that many people were not careful enough about protecting their passwords. An earlier survey showed that only 18.36 percent of over 250,000 respondents said that they changed their password regularly, and 17.05 percent said that they had never changed their password. Over 70 percent of respondents said that they were using the same password on their different accounts.

    (Zhang Yang)