Proof of Human: Building a Human Network for Digital Trust and Scam Resilience in APAC

Online scams have become an industrialized, borderless enterprise. The global cybercrime economy now exceeds US$10 trillion, with over US$1 trillion lost to scams annually. Beyond financial losses, scams erode mental well-being, public trust, and drain enforcement resources. The Asia–Pacific region is both heavily targeted and operationally central: Southeast Asia hosts large-scale scam operations, often linked with trafficking, while advanced markets like Japan and Korea face waves of investment and impersonation scams. The problem is regional and interconnected—demanding coordinated responses across economies.

This paper explores how emerging layers of digital trust—particularly Digital ID and privacy-preserving Proof of Human (PoH) technologies—can help address the growing challenge of scams. It examines digital-identity initiatives in key countries, including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines, to assess how governments, platforms, financial institutions, and civil-society actors are responding to these threats. By analysing how these stakeholders are adopting new verification tools to close gaps in unregulated digital spaces, the paper highlights opportunities to strengthen trust and reduce scam vulnerabilities across the region.

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Country Snapshots

• Japan — My Number: State-verified uniqueness at scale but trust challenged by data-handling incidents; a candidate anchor for hybrid models pairing government ID with PoH for privacy-preserving verification beyond government services.
• South Korea — Real-name regime: Deep integration across finance, telco, and e-gov effectively acts as a PoH proxy; success tempered by privacy/civil-liberty concerns—driving interest in user-controlled, decentralised authentication.
• Malaysia — MyDigital ID (rollout): Biometric-linked credentials tied to the national registry; governance-by-design trajectory aligns well with PoH principles but requires strong safeguards and public trust to scale.
• Philippines — PhilSys (rapid scale): Fast, mass adoption with digital ID download and e-verification; demonstrates operational PoH-like functionality, alongside the need to keep governance and user education apace.

Policy Recommendations

• Integrate Digital ID and PoH into scam-prevention strategies: Embed proof-of-uniqueness checks in financial, e-commerce, and communications flows to curb impersonation, synthetic identities, and bot abuse, guided by trust and safety-based deployment and safeguards that prevent overreliance.
• Support privacy-preserving, interoperable standards: Pair biometric/credential assurance with cryptographic techniques (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs) to protect anonymity where appropriate and enable cross-border usability, while ensuring PoH cannot be repurposed for tracking or profiling.
• Promote regional policy dialogue and coordination: Use platforms like the APEC Business Advisory Council, G20 High-Level Principles for Digital Financial Inclusion, and UN digital-economy initiatives to align objectives, share evidence, and pilot PoH-enabled verification across sectors, including sandbox testing to assess usability, inclusion, and proportionality.

This paper has been researched and produced by the Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute in collaboration with the Japan Trust & Safety Association (JTSA) with support from Tools for Humanity to explore the digital trust landscape in the Asia Pacific region. The information and analysis presented are based on interviews with relevant stakeholders, publicly available information, and analysis by the authors. JTSA’s strategic contribution—particularly insights from Kiyotaka Tanaka on governance, interoperability, and risk-based PoH implementation—greatly informed the development of this paper.

About the Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute

The Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute is a research institute based in Bangkok and Singapore, working across the region. Our mission is to support the development of solutions to the most pressing public policy challenges facing Southeast Asia in the 21st century. The Institute undertakes in-depth research to develop actionable policy solutions on a range of issues across sustainability, technology, public health, trade, and governance. We convene dialogues with stakeholders and decisionmakers to drive discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing markets across the region. The Institute draws on a network of in-market researchers, advisors, and partners to provide insights and recommendations for governments, policymakers, and businesses.