Bahrain's Old-Fashioned Trust Issues

By Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood

They are all around you, and when you let your guard down, they run away gleefully with your money.

I am talking about online scammers.

The days of the old scam plan where people from faraway countries pretended they were representing a trust fund and asked you to pay a medium-sized amount to benefit to the tune of millions are gone.

Today, scammers are more organised, and their volume is what makes their cheat schemes tick.

What they ask for are personal details like CPR or bank details, and they tempt victims over the phone or email with “believable” small prizes, pretending to be your familiar neighbourhood grocery chain or even your bank! Or scammers threaten dire consequences that your CPR or bank account needs updating and get all the sensitive data out of you.

Once you take the bait, you will find big chunks of money missing from your account.

These days, scammers are using AI to mimic people’s voices and even phoning the contacts listed under a specific number to solicit money for an "emergency."

This is cybercrime and as dangerous as holding a knife to a person’s neck.

Always protect yourself by never sharing sensitive data and passwords over the phone and only doing so in person with trusted sources.

Even in this age of AI, old-fashioned transactions are sometimes the best.