Scams are pretty common in the Philippines. When I was younger people would call on the telephone pretending to be a relative, and would ask people to transfer money for an emergency. We also have online scams, where people need to be careful about buying cellphones. At one point they needed to video themselves opening the package, because there have been cases where there was only a brick instead of a phone.
I think we live in a pretty strange world in many ways. One is that this kind of scam behavior is still so common. The other is that we have so many ways to stop it, but we don't employ them.
I agree. Although I think the ways to stop them would usually override some laws. Which makes things difficult.