World Consumer Rights Day observed

Islamabad

According to the National Response Centre for Cyber Crime of the Federal Investigation Agency, which is Pakistan’s only unit of its kind since 2007 to deal with technology-based crime, around 1,500 consumer complaints regarding online scams and frauds are received every month.

“Have you ever been in a situation when you unexpectedly found an online message with what seems like a tempting offer? For instance, an heir’s enormous inheritance who wants to share it with you if you help him out of Nigeria where he is trapped; a ridiculously good job opportunity; an unbelievable discount offer; or simply ‘click-to-earn-money’ advertisements. Regardless of the message’s content, sooner or later you will be asked to send them money,” explains Abrar Hafeez, Secretary General of the Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan, whose organisation along with other consumer rights bodies across the world commemorated the World Consumer Rights Day on Wednesday.

The day is celebrated globally every year on March 15 with a specific theme in a bid to spread awareness about basic rights of consumers. This year, consumer rights organisations campaigned for ‘Building a Digital World Consumers Can Trust.’

Hafeez asserted that the whole business is about an ‘advance fee’ that gives the scam its name. “The money may be demanded in the pretext of either to get a visa to the destination country where the fictitious job is located, to secure your share of the money, to bear the shipping costs of the box of goodies they want to send you absolutely free, or a registration fee,” he added.

“Apart from these scams, another concern emerges with the convenience and outreach of digital consumerism in Pakistan,” said Hafeez, where many ecommerce stores demand consumers an advance payment before shipping the products they wish to shop online. “The consumers often feel cheated because the goods unacceptably diverge from what was actually displayed at an ecommerce website and there are even cases when ecommerce store suddenly went out of business with orders pending and consumers unable to get their refunds.”

For online businesses to invest in Pakistan, added Hafeez, Pakistan needs to have relevant laws and a robust system of checks and balances in place, where scammers are prosecuted and consumer rights are upheld.

For Hamid Masood, a Lahore-based consumer rights advocate, many citizens are aware of these scams by now, but that doesn’t mean everybody else does. “We still regularly hear of people new to the internet, trusting such messages and unluckily handing over their money to the scammers without having a way to get back the money they have lost.”

Despite the lack of safeguards against online fraud in Pakistan, said Masood, many consumers use ecommerce stores, Facebook pages, or websites for shopping. Having limited knowledge about digital security, at times the online consumers end up paying amounts in advance and eventually losing it. Others easily fall prey to “Click to Earn Money” websites/emails, online job scam, and SMS scams.

He advised the consumers to exercise caution when responding to online advertisements or disclosing personal information such as bank account details over the internet. “The next time you see an online advertisement making an attractive offer, you should think twice before taking up that offer,” added Masood.