Suspects of an online scam ring in the northern province of Thai Binh arrested on July 13. (Photo: VNA) H., an accountant of a State-owned agency, said she received amessage from her sister-in-law earlier this month on Facebook telling her to quickly transfer 5million VND (211 USD).
She called to check the situation but couldn't hear her sister-in-lawclearly. She still transferred the money.
Her sister-in-law then informed her friends on Facebook that theaccount was hacked and the perpetrator had tried to scam people by asking toborrow money.
P.T.N in Ba Vi district of Hanoi got a call from a person claimingto be a police officer, informing her that she had violated the law and shemust transfer money to serve the investigation.
After hearing the threats of the person, she followed theinstructions and went to Agribank’s Ba Vi branch, to withdraw all her savingsof 260 million VND (11,030 USD) to transfer to the person. Fortunately, thebank suspected wrongdoing and informed the police.
L. K., of Ho Chi Minh City, told Vietnamnet thathe received a message from his closefriend asking him to transfer 30 million VND (1,270 USD).
Although his friend just posted a status of the results of afootball match a few minutes ago, K. still called him to make sure the messagewas legitimate.
When the call connected, he saw his friend on video who said “I’mlistening.” K. felt secure and transferred the money.
The next day, when the friend posted on his Facebook that account was hacked, K. knew hewas a victim of scammers.
Online scams on the rise
Statistics from the Authority of Information Security revealedthat in the first six months of this year, online fraud in Vietnam increased by64.78% over the same period last year and 37.82% compared to the last sixmonths of last year.
The report focussed on 24 types of scams prevalent in Vietnam,including brand impersonation, account hacks and other combinations, theauthority said.
According to Tran Quang Hung, acting deputy director of theauthority, fraudsters have taken advantage of modern technologies to createsophisticated and effective fraud systems that are difficult to identify.
Groups of people that are often scammed include the elderly,children, students, and low-income workers, who have lower ability to recognisesigns and acts of fraud.
Online scammers are not only located in Vietnam, but also in othercountries. The rings of scammers in foreign countries also include Vietnamese.
Hung said that recently the authority discovered that fraudstersnot only used one application but also used 195 different applications to trickpeople into installing online tax payment applications to perform online publicservices with tax incentives, then they will scam to get bank account numbersof users, and steal money from them.
Solutions
According to the authority, in addition to applying technology toprevent online scams, another important thing is to promote communication anddissemination of online scams to as many people as possible.
"When each citizen knows how to identify forms of fraud, theywill be more vigilant,” Hung said.
Therefore, the ministry launched the campaign "Action monthto disseminate identification and prevention of online fraud" between June23 and July 23, he said.
The campaign had been widely covered in the media and on socialnetworks to provide adequate information about online fraud to people, throughvideo clips of popular online scams, guidance on identifying 24 types of scams,and providing a set of manuals to help citizens protect themselves and theirfamilies in cyberspace.
Recently, many people had informed relevant State agencies aboutforms of online fraud. It helped the agencies detect and promptly disseminateknowledge about online fraud to other people, thereby preventing online scams,he said./.
VNA
