Tourist pickpocketing tricks

Understanding the high demand for tourism in the summer and many customers will look to book hotel rooms via social networks, scammers often create a series of fake fanpages of famous hotels and resorts with professional operations to confuse people.

Accordingly, these fanpages often post vibrant travel photos, even have a blue check mark to verify Facebook's identity, making people completely trust them.

Then, taking advantage of tourists' fear of missing out, these subjects often post attractive promotions and offers. When customers contact them, they always use the advertising trick of "only 1-2 rooms left at a preferential price". From there, they ask customers to pay a deposit to reserve a room. After receiving the deposit, customers will no longer be able to contact these fake fanpages.

More dangerously, many scammers also appropriate people's assets by reporting a mistaken transfer and asking for the transfer to be re-transferred many times to get the money.

In fact, there have been many cases where victims lost billions of dong when falling into these scams.

The trick of selling cheap airline tickets is also commonly used by bad guys, taking advantage of the fact that airline ticket prices often increase during peak seasons.

Similarly, a common trick that scammers often use is to impersonate the fanpage or website of a reputable airline or an official airline ticket agent. Then, the scammer often requests a quick transfer to “hold a seat” and finally cuts off contact or reports an error. Sometimes, customers receive a fake booking/reservation code and when they arrive at the airport, they discover that there is no transaction.

Why are tourists easily trapped?

Recalling the case of Ms. VTT, who lost a billion VND in early February when booking a hotel room on a Facebook fanpage with a blue tick named after a famous resort in Ninh Binh, lawyer Tran Tuan Anh - Director of Minh Bach Law Firm - said that, besides the sophistication of the scammers, it is impossible not to mention the subjectivity of the victims.

“ Fraudsters easily commit their crimes because they know how to exploit the trust of their victims, manipulate their psychology and use sophisticated tricks. Meanwhile, tourists are also subjective and lack practical knowledge,” said lawyer Tuan Anh.

Mr. Tuan Anh emphasized that people need to know that Facebook blue ticks are not the most reliable way to determine credibility because they can be completely faked when the conditions for granting blue ticks are extremely loose. Even now, many websites still give detailed instructions on how to create fake blue ticks simply or take old, inactive blue tick accounts and rename them to turn them into accounts with full blue ticks.

According to the victim, the scammer initially gave very enthusiastic and thoughtful advice, causing the victim to let down his guard. During the process of luring the victim, the scammer used many tricks to put psychological pressure, such as constantly calling to urge, informing that the room was almost full or continuously reporting transaction errors, causing the victim to panic and follow the instructions in the hope of getting their money back.

In addition, they also impersonate professionals by making video calls and creating fake sounds like consultants to increase the level of trust. To avoid suspicion, the scammers do not directly ask the victim to transfer money but instruct them to enter a code into the banking application, which is actually a money transfer order with unclear instructions, easily causing misunderstandings.

“ Another factor that makes it easy for them to carry out their actions is exploiting loopholes in personal security. Many users do not have the habit of carefully checking information before making transactions, while social networks do not strictly control fake fanpages. After successfully defrauding, they even shut down the victim's Facebook account to prevent warning others.

All of the above factors show that these subjects have sophisticated, methodical plans and very good psychological manipulation skills, making victims confused and easily falling into traps," said Mr. Tuan Anh.

According to lawyer Tran Tuan Anh, at present, with the development of society, payment by account money has become popular. This invisibly creates conditions for fraud in cyberspace to become more complicated than ever, especially the form of impersonating businesses and official fanpages to trick people into transferring money.

Therefore, everyone needs to be vigilant and absolutely do not transfer money to unclear personal or organizational accounts online.

Before making any transaction, you need to carefully check the information of the receiving unit, verify through official channels such as websites, call centers or trusted contacts and always ask yourself whether the incident is happening reasonably.

For travel, vacations, hotel bookings, travel tickets or online shopping, you should prioritize reputable support platforms or large e-commerce sites. In addition, absolutely do not provide OTP codes, bank account passwords or personal information to anyone online.

Source: https://vtcnews.vn/can-trong-sap-bay-lua-dao-trong-mua-du-lich-nong-nhat-nam-ar940073.html