WE just purchased a phone for my son, as a security measure.

Over the years we had been told again and again how he could use a phone in an emergency when he is home alone, or how we could use it to keep track of him when he needs to travel unsupervised.

But less than one week after the purchase, I’m having second thoughts.

It was reported recently that a senior high school student in Shanghai surnamed Lu, after receiving several phone calls from fraudsters, traveled from Shanghai to Lianyungang in Jiangsu Province.

On July 19, the girl, while at home alone, received a phone call allegedly from an express delivery service telling her that she was suspected of involvement in shady dealings. Then a “police officer” told her that her family would be in “mortal danger” unless she acted as instructed.

Following directions, the girl sold her old handset, bought a new one for 150 yuan (US$22.46), changed her mobile phone number, and took a taxi to Nantong, Jiangsu Province, where she put up for the night before heading to Lianyungang the following day.

As police explained later, these were all ruses used by the swindlers to prevent the girl from contacting, or being contacted by, her parents while away from home.

On the night of July 19, Lu’s mother received a call from the swindlers demanding half-a-million yuan in ransom for the girl, whom they said was in their hands.

Fortunately, when the girl was found in Lianyungang on the evening of July 20, she seemed to have suffered nothing worse than an arduously long journey.

As the police warned, students left at home alone during the summer holidays are now favored targets in telecom scams.

In the case mentioned above, some have moralized about the girl’s lack of social experience, or about her failure to adapt to changing social conditions. Such comments are probably unfair.

We can’t expect teenagers to be rich in experience. Nor is it fair to accuse her of being gullible.

Isn’t xin (good faith and trustworthiness), one of the five cardinal virtues extolled by our educators since Confucius, one of the redeeming features of the Chinese outlook on life?

Given the versatility of fraudsters, it seems difficult to formulate general guidelines for guarding against them. Mere experience can no longer be enough to prevent an honest citizen from falling into traps laid by ever-innovating con masters.

As the examples below will indicate, telecom scams have ensnared victims ranging from school students and pensioners, to corporate managers and certified accountants working for high-profile multinational companies.

As a matter of fact, we are being constantly reminded of our vulnerability.

For instance, these days metro passengers in Shanghai are repeatedly warned by the public address system that “for the sake of your security do not divulge any personal information to a stranger.”

Many traps

This skepticism is counter-educational, though helpful.

With reference to the afore-mentioned high school student, our citizens also need to be warned against unsolicited messages from strangers.

For younger students, one good piece of advice is to reject any incoming calls from a stranger.

But this, too, is simplistic, for telecom scams have already mastered the technology of having any number they want displayed on your screen, a tactic that has helped get the better of many older, more worldly victims.

In April last year, Xinmin Evening News reported on a telecom scam involving a 69-year-old woman from Hong Kong surnamed Yu who was at her office in Lujiazui when she received a call she believed to be from her bank.

She was told her money was at risk, and needed to be transferred immediately to a “national safe account.”

She lost 14.8 million yuan.

Beware of strangers.

Forget about the Biblical injunction that “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Given the ease with which some have walked into traps laid by strangers, many of us have to forego the possibility of entertaining angels.

Conversely, this does not mean we should place total trust in people we know.

Two teachers from Chongqing — both women, aged 25 — fell out of contact on July 13 after they arrived in Beijing as tourists two days earlier.

On July 21, police managed to find the pair in Chaoyang District, Beijing. Having been deceived by a university alumnus of one woman, they ended up being entrapped by a pyramid sales gang. Pyramid sales scams generally target friends, relatives and classmates.

A similar incident happened in late June, when 23-year-old Zhang Wei of Baoji, Shaanxi Province, received a message from a former classmate surnamed Chen. Chen had fallen prey to a pyramid sales scheme and was trapped in a village in Tianjin. When three police officers stormed the village on the night of June 27, they were aghast to find the village was home to no less than 600 members of a pyramid sales gang. The police were so outnumbered that they managed to rescue only six of them, including Chen.

Anti-fraud platform

Although these are just a random sampling of recent scams, these examples suffice to suggest our vulnerability, however sophisticated we suppose ourselves to be.

Fortunately, the government has weighed in.

According to reports, on July 17 Shanghai formally launched a platform that specializes in fighting telecom and Internet fraud through cooperation between police, telecommunication operators, and banks.

Since beginning its trial run on March 21, it has successfully frozen nearly 70 million yuan in ill-gotten money.

The platform has also reportedly led to the arrest of 115 suspects, and dissuaded 11,000 potential victims from paying up.

On March 31, the platform received a call from a company saying that an accountant with its German headquarters had, after receiving a scam email, transferred 2.99 million euros (US$3.21 million) to an off-shore account belonging to the Shanghai branch of Agricultural Bank of China. Within ten minutes the platform alerted the bank to freeze the money, and later helped capture three individuals associated with the account.

Such technology certainly helps, but a more daunting task is how to cleanse the soil wherein so many fraudsters thrive, and to restore the feelings of trust and respect that should characterize all human relations.

A society that is no longer nurtured by mutual trust and good faith is little more than a jungle where anybody can reach for a gun at the approach of a stranger.

This certainly adds tremendously to the costs of all social interactions.

As an anti-fraud police official from the afore-mentioned platform acknowledged recently, what worries him most is that some victims seem to have more faith in fake cops than real ones like him.

It might be easy to bring fraudsters to justice, but no platform is enough to address the underlying causes that allowed fraud to be practiced at such a scale.