As part of our well-being lesson, our Year 8 class took part in a session led by Our Rescue Thailand and the Thai Royal Police about cybercrime. In this session, led by Police General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot, Police Captain Purit Jessadakannasoon, Police Captain Phumitud Phisasakda and Police Lieutenant Patra Nilpradab, we learnt the importance of staying safe online. They explained how scammers can take your information easily through any website and how to prevent this from happening.

By introducing real life examples, they guided us through scenarios of different scams, described the seven steps that scammers use to gain your trust and educated us of the three reasons why we fall for scams: trust (they get you to trust them into giving them what they want), fear (they scare you into thinking you or your loved ones will be harmed if you don’t comply), greed (they take advantage of you by luring with ‘too good to be true’ deals). They opened a website that seemed like a normal webpage but then revealed it was a scam. Just by clicking on the link, the scammers already knew your location, IP address, email and password.

The session involved chances to volunteer to take part for prizes. We also participated in fun quizzes to test our knowledge about our online safety. Overall, the session was a fun and informative experience for us all reminding us about the importance of online safety.