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A review by toggle_fow
Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds by Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, Mark Bo
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.5
What it says on the tin. This book is an in-depth examination of the phenomenon of scam compounds in Southeast Asia, where cybercrime is conducted as a massive corporate enterprise.
Organized crime has been in the cybercrime business since its inception, but these large-scale compounds tied to human trafficking are a more recent development. And, since they first targeted mainly Chinese and Chinese-speaking populations, this threat is less well-known in the West.
The authors do a thorough dissection of the issue, from the evolution of these compounds and the organizations that run them, to what factors allow them to exist, to the various pressures that drive victims to fall prey to being trafficked into scam work. They clearly are drawing from not just a large body of worldwide and Chinese-language reporting, but also from personal experience working with trafficking victims and interviewing people involved in all facets of the SE Asia cybercrime industry.
I have a massive amount of respect for the work this book represents. The authors are bringing great value to the table by offering Chinese-language sources and primary source interviews to an English-speaking audience, which otherwise would have no access to this information. Millions of dollars have been lost and lives ruined by these scams all across the world and the threat is still poorly understood, so this book's work is sorely needed.
However, I don't think this book completely comes down from its academic height to meet a layperson reader at their level.
It is still structured and cited like an academic article, dry and repetitive in spots. The topic does not lack interest, and has all the potential to be gripping. If this book is in fact meant to reach a general audience, I would have liked to see the authors work a little more to convey the human impact and story of the issue as well as the information.
Organized crime has been in the cybercrime business since its inception, but these large-scale compounds tied to human trafficking are a more recent development. And, since they first targeted mainly Chinese and Chinese-speaking populations, this threat is less well-known in the West.
The authors do a thorough dissection of the issue, from the evolution of these compounds and the organizations that run them, to what factors allow them to exist, to the various pressures that drive victims to fall prey to being trafficked into scam work. They clearly are drawing from not just a large body of worldwide and Chinese-language reporting, but also from personal experience working with trafficking victims and interviewing people involved in all facets of the SE Asia cybercrime industry.
I have a massive amount of respect for the work this book represents. The authors are bringing great value to the table by offering Chinese-language sources and primary source interviews to an English-speaking audience, which otherwise would have no access to this information. Millions of dollars have been lost and lives ruined by these scams all across the world and the threat is still poorly understood, so this book's work is sorely needed.
However, I don't think this book completely comes down from its academic height to meet a layperson reader at their level.
It is still structured and cited like an academic article, dry and repetitive in spots. The topic does not lack interest, and has all the potential to be gripping. If this book is in fact meant to reach a general audience, I would have liked to see the authors work a little more to convey the human impact and story of the issue as well as the information.