Taiwan is on the front line in the fight against mobile phone fraud.
In Taiwan, we see all kinds of fraud in advance. This knowledge can be used to protect other countries.
Whoscall, one of the most popular spam blocking apps on the island, is owned by Mr. Kuo's firm, Gogolook.
More than 1.6 billion telephone numbers, both Taiwanese ones and ones from across Asia and other parts of the world, are blocked by its artificial intelligence powered software.
Whoscall blocked more than 122 million scam messages in Taiwan alone.
Taiwan is a hot spot for fraud in the telecom industry. The island's small population makes it a "practice ground" for both Taiwanese gangs and those from mainland China. If a new phone scam works in Taiwan, then they can expand it across Asia and the world.
We give Apple a lot of evidence until they realize there is a serious problem. If they don't take care of it, it will be in Europe and the US very soon.
The fact that Taiwan is one of the top manufacturers of high-tech technology is one of the reasons why so many new scam originate on the island. Taiwanese scam artists share this level of technical expertise, according to her.
Millions of people were stuck at home, and therefore more reliant upon their phones, making it a good time for scam artists.
She says that the high stock market in Taiwan led to a rise in investment scam.
"SCAMmers would give advice on app pages, or they would start a chat group and say that they can tell you when a stock is going to rise, and they can share this intel if you join their group."
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Money would be asked for for the information. People would receive phone messages from strangers offering loans at very low rates.
The extent of the criminal networks behind the scamming has led some Taiwanese gangs to open up operations in other countries. In 2020, 92 Taiwanese people were arrested in Montenegro.
Taiwanese people are lured to Cambodia under the false promise of high wages. They are forced to work against their will in order to make money.
There is a weapon race between anti-fraud firms and fraudsters. Some people still get through despite Whoscall and similar apps blocking millions of messages.
Everyone who has lived in Taiwan knows burst dialling, a method used by fraudsters. When you answer an unknown number, you will hear a brief dialling sound, and then a pre-recorded message will play.
The calls are made by auto-dial systems. It's an effective way for the fraudsters to find people who will answer their phone even if they don't know who is calling.
A cyber security expert from Taiwan says that once a person is found, they get calls back.
He says that if the number is used by someone, they will sell the active phone data, or tell you that you need to pay a loan or insurance. Most of the time it's about paying in installments, like when you shop online or something.
Ms Hsiao says that scam artists still target young adults even though they may not be familiar with technology or scam trends.
Earlier this year, a 20-something Taiwanese YouTuber named Edison Lin posted a video on the platform in which he explained that he had been a victim of telephone fraud.
He was tricked out of $13,000 by two people.
Mr Lin said he got a call from a person pretending to be an employee of the restaurant he had visited. He was told by the man that he would be offered assistance in getting the money back.
The other fraudster pretended to be from Mr Lin's bank after Mr Lin had ended the call.
Mr Lin said in his video that the fake clerk told him how to get compensation from E. Sun. I thought he was a bank clerk.
One of them was transferring my money while we were talking for half an hour. I have yet to pay off the debt.
Prof Wachter is an expert on the use of artificial intelligence software systems.
She says that the general public needs to be better educated about the risks of tech-based fraud and that artificial intelligence can be an effective tool to defend against it.
She says that technology is being used to scale up fraud attempts. Some people might be more gullible and vulnerable to deception because texting or calls seem legitimate if executed in convincing and sophisticated ways.
Since fraud is scaling up, the strategy to combat these attempts must too scale up and so it makes sense to deploy artificial intelligence software for this purpose
How effective these attempts are, and if we will be able to completely stop this behavior, is the question. We can curb it temporarily. People can fall into the trap if they don't know how to use digital literacy. Artificial intelligence can be used to detect and intervene in scam.
"Fighting fraudsters may be never-ending, but so is our determination to sharpen our skills and stand up", said Jeff Kuo, back at Whoscall.
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