How ASEAN tackles scams through gamified public education

Civil servants may know how to spot a phishing email. But what happens when the scam sounds exactly like their boss or colleague?

According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), Southeast Asia lost an estimated US$23.6 billion (S$30.23 billion) to scams in 2024, with actual losses likely higher due to under-reporting.

“A sophisticated scam rarely begins with a technical breach. It is not about cyberattacks. Scammers exploit human behaviour,” the ASEAN Foundation Executive Director, Piti Srisangnam, notes.

While public awareness remains important, the ASEAN Foundation believes that knowing the scam tactics is not enough. 

For that reason, the ASEAN Foundation, supported by Google.org, has rolled out Scam Ready ASEAN, a programme that adopts gamified learning to train the community in responding to actual scenarios.

Moving from awareness campaigns to behavioural resilience

“The key vulnerability is often not a lack of technical knowledge, but the absence of a moment to pause and verify,” Srisangnam shares with GovInsider.

“Similar to how vaccines prepare the body to respond to future threats, scam simulations prepare individuals to recognise manipulation techniques before encountering real attacks,” he adds.

Unlike traditional training that focuses on awareness, Scam Ready ASEAN trains the community through simulation, where they practice responding to various scam scenarios encountered by different personas. 

The behavioural conditioning shifts towards building resilience, allowing the community to develop habits to think twice before acting.

“It is a way to build a psychological wall that acts automatically once you keep practising it,” Srisangnam says.

Related to this, the Scam Ready ASEAN Programme Project Manager, Satria Ugahari, has launched the #LearnPlayandProtectOneAnother initiative, combining open-access learning resources, gamified simulations, and community engagement to encourage continuous learning and collective responsibility.

Ugahari says that the programme covers five pillars: understanding, identifying, preventing, reporting scams and supporting the community. 

It leverages storytelling and community engagement to build everyday verification habits, ultimately instilling three core behaviours: pause before acting, reflect before responding to urgent requests, and verify before trusting.

As Fatima Alifha Alatas, a Senior Communications for the Scam Ready ASEAN Programme notes, repeated practice is more effective than instructive policies.

“Once you issue a memo or command people to follow a policy, some people reject it, and some people do not even read it. But if we keep practising it through activities like computer games, we create habits automatically,” she says.

Scam Ready ASEAN provides a channel for the community to verify information, discuss scam tactics openly while reducing stigma, and ultimately, make verification a workplace and community habit.

Localisation and scaling impact through community networks

Effective capacity building requires a balance between regional cooperation and local adaptation.

As Srisangnam says, “although ASEAN countries face similar scam challenges, the digital environments, behaviours and vulnerabilities differ significantly across member states.”

The programme, therefore, adopts a localisation approach that goes beyond translation.

It looks into the community needs, adapting the content based on local scam trends, cultural contexts and digital behaviours.

Conventional thinking often assumes younger, digitally savvy users are less prone to scams. The reality may be more complicated.

“Digital confidence does not equal scam resilience,” he highlights. “But that confidence can make them underestimate risks.” 

Young users may have high digital confidence due to their familiarity with technology, thus making them less vigilant.

Likewise, more experienced officers may trust long-established workflows without recognising how artificial intelligence (AI) can now imitate colleagues and act upon their vulnerability.

The challenge is, therefore, not digital literacy alone, but maintaining healthy scepticism regardless of their experience.

This is why Scam Ready ASEAN emphasises peer-to-peer learning by collaborating with community organisations, educators and content creators across the member states.

Earlier this year, the programme was introduced during the 6th ASEAN Digital Ministers’ Meeting in Vietnam, followed by its launch in Malaysia and the establishment of a local implementing partnership in the Philippines. 

Scam Ready ASEAN now involves 20 local organisations across 11 ASEAN member states, targeting to train 2,000 master trainers who will then deliver the education to at least 550,000 beneficiaries.

The other partnership includes Malaysia Cyber Consumer Association (MCCA), a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting cyber safety, digital literacy, and responsible online behaviour.  

Building civil servant readiness against AI-enabled scams

While governments remain responsible for cybersecurity and regulation, the ASEAN Foundation highlights that public institutions must also strengthen human capability.

“Civil servants are often the first point of contact for victims. Whether in law enforcement, financial sectors, regulators or local administrations, if they are equipped to recognise scam tactics, they can assist citizens faster,” Srisangnam notes.

For instance, an officer can confirm unusual requests before responding to urgent financial instructions. By verifying information, they exemplify the practices that the community can follow.

“If citizens can recognise scams and know where to seek support, it shortens the distance between citizens and protection,” Ugahari adds.

Scam networks operate across borders, hence no single country can address the issue alone. The ASEAN Foundation’s role is to complement their efforts by strengthening the human side of cybersecurity.

In addition to public education, the ASEAN Foundation has convened regional dialogues where governments, industry and civil society exchange lessons that inform national policy responses.

The ASEAN Foundation has also recently joined GASA in fostering information exchange and coordinating responses against online fraud.