In the past week, there have been over 40 online shopping fraud cases related to Threads, involving 1.35 million. An 18-year-old male was lured by a "free badminton racket" and lost nearly 50,000 yuan

The police's "Guardians of the Internet" social platform announced that in the past week, there were at least 274 cases of online shopping-related fraud. Among them, over 41 cases were related to the Threads social platform, with losses exceeding HKD 1.35 million.

Recently, an 18-year-old man saw a post on Threads claiming that badminton rackets were being given away for free. After messaging the unknown user, he was told to collect the item at a 7-11 convenience store, but was asked to first verify his account on a phishing website that impersonated the convenience store.

Following the instructions, he transferred money to the user's personal account in two transactions, losing nearly HKD 50,000 in total. He only realized he had been scammed when he received a notification from the bank about the transfers.

The police remind everyone that regardless of the social platform used, even if someone claims to be giving away free items, if they ask you to enter personal banking information or make transfers to unknown websites for verification, there is a 90% chance it is a scam