Vietnam Cyberspace Emergency Response Center - VNCERT/CC under the Department of Information Security, Ministry of Information and Communications said that recently, this agency has regularly received people's feedback about fraudulent messages and calls from strange phone numbers.

According to statistics from the Department of Information Security, in the last 2 weeks of October 2024, the unit's technical systems recorded nearly 9,700 complaints from Vietnamese users about online fraud cases, including nearly 9,300 complaints about fraudulent calls and messages sent via hotline 156/5656. Below are 2 common phone scams in the past 7 days, according to VNCERT/CC's assessment:

Impersonating an electricity company employee to defraud and appropriate property

According to the Vietnam Cyber ​​Emergency Response Center, currently, scammers are constantly using many tricks to lure people, especially the trick of impersonating electricity company employees to call people to support linking banks to the application to pay electricity bills.

Specifically, the subjects called people and claimed to be officials of the electricity company, asking and instructing people to install the electricity application to pay electricity bills. People were asked to click on the link provided by the subject to download the application, fill in personal information and transfer electricity bills to a strange QR code.

After following the scammers' instructions, people may face risks such as personal information being leaked, exposed, device control being taken over, and money in their accounts being appropriated.

The Vietnam Cyber ​​Emergency Response Center recommends: When there is a need to link a bank account to pay for electricity, people should look up and learn information in advance from the official website of Vietnam Electricity at evn.com.vn. In addition, people should also be cautious with any unverified information and pay attention to protecting their personal information to avoid unnecessary risks.

Call to inform about telecommunication debt to scam

Although this is not a new scam, many mobile subscribers have still fallen into the trap of scammers. In terms of tricks, the subject pretends to be a network operator employee to call the subscriber and inform them that they "owe telecommunication fees to the network operator", and asks people to transfer money to pay the outstanding fees.

When impersonators impersonating network operators 'read' their personal information, with the fear of having their services cut off, many phone subscribers did not think carefully and followed the instructions, transferring money to the accounts provided by the scammers. After taking the money, the scammers will block communication and erase all traces.

To avoid becoming a victim of this popular form of phone fraud, the Vietnam Cyber ​​Emergency Response Center recommends that people be careful when transferring money to pay for services; at the same time, be vigilant against information and notifications provided by strangers via phone calls, chats, text messages or emails sent to phones to prevent the risk of being scammed and having your personal information and data stolen.

In addition, people are also advised to keep text messages or call recordings as evidence to report to the telecommunications company managing their phone subscriptions to request support and handling when encountering a suspected fraud situation. People also need to immediately report to the police for handling or notify the criminal hotline number '0692348560' of the Criminal Police Department for timely guidance and support.

Received more than 220,000 fraud reports from Vietnamese users In the first 10 months of this year, the technical systems of the Department of Information Security (Ministry of Information and Communications) received more than 220,000 fraud reports, with most of the cases related to finance and banking.