The Malaysian Online Community

There is one surprising fact about many members of forums which are designed to look for money, be they forex forums, GPT forums, networking or even HYIP forums. They are mainly from Southeast Asia, and they are Malaysians. Despite Malaysia’s estimated population of 25 million people, as compared to the United States population of 301 million, or China and India’s population of some 1 billion people each, or even Indonesia’s population of 234 million people (CIA World Factbook 2007), Malaysians by far – at least in comparisons of population ratio –  form the bulk of autosurf and HYIP membership and online communities.

A quick look up on traffic statistics for popular online earning sites which include HYIPs, autosurfs, PTP sites, and forex, (many of them listed on the Malaysian Securities Commission warning list) shows that in some of these websites, a staggering percentage of the visitors are Malaysians – and Malaysians often rank among the top 3 users of the site. Over 50% of the visitors to the Swisscash website are Malaysians (Ranked 1^st). Agloco, the program most hyped on the Internet, has over 7.2% Malaysian membership (ranked 2^nd). Marketiva, a popular forex site, has 21.9% Malaysians as members (ranked 1^st). Northfinance, the forex broker preferred by most N American and UK traders, is also dominated by 24.2% Malaysian membership (ranked 1^st).

But perhaps the most telling sign of Malaysian dominance on the online money-making scene is the percentage of Malaysian users on the world’s favourite online currency, e-gold. Malaysia forms a staggering 12.0% of e-gold accounts, second only to USA’s 20.7%. Even Russia’s populous country only comes third at just over 4%. Consider again that unlike Americans who use e-gold for a variety of businesses, there are extremely few Malaysian businesses that accept e-gold as payments: meaning that e-gold users in Malaysia are individuals who use e-gold for online money-making opportunities!

The Table 1.0 below displays the internet traffic statistics for selected websites for April 2007 and can be accessed at www.alexa.com.

Table 1.0: Traffic Statistics for selected sites related to money-making opportunities, April 2007
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Malaysians are also fond of discussing and promoting these programs among their own circles and communities. Online forums, portals and communities abound, such as carigold.com and nogold.com, where Alexa.com shows over 90% of members are Malaysians. Even on international, English-speaking online business forums such as moneymakergroup.com and talkgold.com, Malaysians are the second largest group of members. But, they are in fact are the largest group of members who enter those forums to discuss in the money-making sections.

These statistics show that Malaysians are not tired of cash-earning ideas despite their presence in the country for over 10 years. They also show that Malaysians are far more interested in these programs than in any of the other counterparts. Membership and support from the Malaysian public is actually increasing every year.

But how many Malaysians are actually making money from all the online programs?

Malaysian Masqueraders

As Spears et al (1995) put it: “Computer bulletin boards can be a gold mine for swindlers, and there's often little that can be done about it.”

The massive scams of the PIPS program in 2003 (the administrators were arrested and one jailed in Malaysia in 2006) and more recently, SwissCash, also revealed that many of the programme managers were actually Malaysian or living in Malaysia. Swisscash continues to use a fictional UK national called Michael Mansfield as their spokesperson.

Much more recently, Malaysians were arrested for being involved in the overseas scam, Cambridge Capital Trading. Bank Negara Malaysia froze accounts holding over MYR 1.6 million. On 21 April 2007, the HYIP e-barrel.com was also shut down after it was believed that the owners were connected to the Cambridge Capital Trading scam. The administrator, although claiming to be a foreigner, is believed to be from Ipoh, Perak (The Australian Edge, 21 April 2007).

Many reports are also surfacing online and in forums of forex scams, usually from the sales of signals or strategies: many of them are believed to be scammed by Malaysians.

Are Malaysians bad for the online moneymaking world? Many think that most of them are giving their countrymen a bad name… but scammers come from every nation. I believe there is no distinction between a Asian, American or European member… only education and a good conscience will determine.

Bibliography

Spears, Gregory, Kopecki, Dawn, “Cops and Robbers on the Net.” Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Vol. 49, Issue 2, Feb 1995.