With the rapid development of Internet technologies, new cybercrimes, represented by telecom and online fraud, have spread globally and become a worldwide common danger that seriously threatens the property safety of people around the world. The Chinese government sticks to severely combating telecom and online fraud and pays high attention to related publicity and prevention. As crimes of telecom and online fraud are preventable, effectively enhancing people's awareness to prevent and ability to identify fraud plays a crucial role in reducing the incidence of crimes. In recent years, starting with the link of "prevention", the Chinese government has extensively mobilized all sectors of society and pooled the wisdom of the masses to build an anti-fraud publicity, education and prevention system participated in by all people. These efforts have effectively curbed the frequent occurrences of crimes of telecom and online fraud and realized a year-on-year decline in the incidence of telecom and online fraud cases for 17 consecutive months.

A new anti-fraud publicity pattern with the participation of the whole society has been built

In 2015, the Chinese government established a working mechanism for cracking down on crimes of telecom and online fraud, which is led by the Ministry of Public Security and participated in by 25 ministries and commissions, in which procuratorial, judicial, public security, financial, industry and information technology and cyberspace affairs departments perform their duties, cooperate closely and communicate efficiently to conduct various tasks to crack down on crimes of telecom and online fraud. Further, Chinese public security organs have mobilized the whole police force to organize anti-fraud publicity activities in communities, rural areas, families, schools and enterprises, widely distribute the Publicity Brochure on Preventing Telecom and Online Fraud and launch various forms of anti-fraud publicity, to spread anti-fraud knowledge to the masses. Competent industry departments for finance, communications and the Internet have organized and mobilized banks, communications operators and Internet enterprises to conduct extensive anti-fraud prevention publicity to practitioners and service objects by posting up announcements, sending text messages and pushing pop-up window prompts. Anti-fraud centers have been set up in large enterprises, communities and subdistricts and university campuses in some places, to mobilize, by using the police-people joint action working mechanism, people to become anti-fraud volunteers to conduct all-round and wide-coverage anti-fraud early warning and publicity and effectively enhance people's self-prevention awareness and ability. For example, on the basis of campus anti-fraud centers, Beijing has added subdistrict anti-fraud centers and Internet enterprise anti-fraud centers and established volunteer teams that cover more than 3,200 communities and 1,500 colleges and universities in the municipality. It has truly promoted the participation of all social forces in anti-fraud publicity work.

Five most prominent types of telecom and online fraud have been released

Currently, in China, the five types of fraud, including rebates for false purchases, false investment and wealth management, false online loaning, false shopping, and impersonating staff of public security organs, procuratorial organs and people's courts, account for nearly 80% of all the fraud cases and have become the five most frequently-occurring types of cases. The type of fraud, rebates for false purchases, refers to fraud in which swindlers attract victims through part-time false purchases, rebates for doing tasks, etc., and after obtaining the victims' trust with small-amount rebates, they induce the victims to increase investment, thereby defrauding the victims of large amounts of money. This type of fraud currently has the highest incidence, accounting for about 1/3 of the overall number of fraud cases. The type of fraud, false investment and wealth management, refers to fraud in which swindlers obtain the trust of victims by disguising themselves as "investment gurus" or in the name of "love dating" and then use "high returns" as bait to entice the victims to invest on false investment platforms, thereby defrauding the victims of money. This type of fraud currently involves the largest amount of money that accounts for about 1/3 of all the funds involved in fraud cases. In response to the above five most frequently-occurring types of fraud, Chinese police have introduced specific fraud methods, exposed typical cases and given prevention prompts to the public by posting publicity videos, producing prevention publicity posters and organizing news media to conduct publicity, so as to make people, as many as possible, understand and know these types and methods of fraud, quickly identify fraud and thus avoid being swindled.

Accurate prevention publicity has been conducted

for easily swindled groups

For different easily swindled groups, the Chinese government has adopted different strategies and conducted targeted prevention publicity. For students, anti-fraud student volunteer teams have been built, anti-fraud knowledge has been introduced to teaching materials and classrooms and anti-fraud knowledge contests have been held; for overseas students, "Studying Abroad Safely" online live lessons have been organized and the Fraud Prevention Guides for Overseas Study have been issued; for accounting personnel, pre-employment training has been organized, anti-fraud micro-classes have been held in enterprises, typical cases have been exposed and modus operandi have been deeply exposed and criticized to enhance the accounting personnel's awareness of prevention; for the elderly, the Telecom and Online Fraud Prevention Handbook for the Elderly has been prepared and distributed, a series of videos on prevention of elderly care fraud have been produced, and anti-fraud publicity has been conducted in communities, universities for the elderly, nursing homes and other places where the elderly gather; for office workers, the "anti-fraud bus and metro lines" have been opened in many big cities, in which anti-fraud slogans and posters are posted inside and outside the carriages, metro, bus and airport TVs are employed to play anti-fraud short videos and public service ads on a loop to comprehensively spread the idea of "everyone has anti-fraud responsibility" from multiple angles and in depth so that the public can implicitly accept anti-fraud publicity and education in their daily travel.

A strong atmosphere of anti-fraud publicity involving all media has been created

Relevant departments of the Chinese government organize the "National Anti-Fraud Publicity Month" activity nationwide every year to mobilize the whole society to pay attention to, participate in and support anti-fraud work. It has become an important anti-fraud publicity brand, for which a series of special press conferences have been held and 13,000 offline thematic publicity activities have been organized. Further, People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, China Media Group and other mainstream news media broadcast anti-fraud program series in prime time and publish anti-fraud publicity and prevention prompts and typical cases on important pages and in prominent positions of newspapers and websites. For more than 950 million smartphone users in China, the Chinese government takes full advantage of new media communication on the Internet and has opened nearly 4,000 new media accounts nationwide for anti-fraud publicity, so as to build a new media matrix for anti-fraud publicity and form a strong joint communication influence. In order to reveal fraud methods, expose typical cases and issue prevention publicity prompts, police, media, Internet enterprises and anti-fraud volunteers have produced a large number of creative anti-fraud publicity videos, comics, long graphics and other works. For example, the National Anti-Fraud Center's official government accounts have posted 8,460 short videos with more than 4.72 billion views and 170 million likes. Among them, the "anti-fraud costume drama - Anti-Fraud Lady", "anti-fraud cartoon - Anti-Fraud Storm" and "anti-fraud microfilm - Faith" have been popular on the Internet and well received by the masses and have achieved good publicity effects. These endeavors have effectively built for the masses a "protecting wall" against telecom and online fraud and significantly improved people's ability to identify and prevent fraud.