Be vigilant when operating in the digital environment

Many scams

Authorities promote awareness of cyber fraud at a conference. Photo: THUY TIEN

In the digital age, online buying, selling, trading, and payment have become essential needs due to their convenience in life. Taking advantage of this, bad guys have come up with many tricks to trap users for profit and property appropriation.

Ms. VTT in An Phu commune (Tuy Hoa city) has just fallen into the trap of such scammers. Ms. T's family is a traditional fish sauce production facility. Recently, to expand her trading activities, she posted products for sale on social networking platforms. The bad guys contacted her to place an order in a fairly large quantity. Next, they also asked to buy a few more boxes of marinated squid. Since her family did not have this item, they introduced her to a place they had known for a long time to buy it for her, and packed the goods for her to conveniently send.

“Because I trusted him, I contacted him to buy some squid and he told me that he had a batch of squid that was bombed and was offering a 30% discount, so I transferred the money to buy it and resell it for a profit. Two days later, I still hadn’t seen the goods arrive, so I couldn’t contact the place that sold the marinated squid, and I couldn’t call the person who ordered the fish sauce either. Only then did I realize I had fallen into a trap,” said Ms. T.

Mr. PBL, a tourist from Hanoi, lost more than 13 million VND when booking a room online during the recent Hung Kings' Death Anniversary. Choosing Phu Yen as his destination, Mr. L went online to research and chose Stelia Beach Resort in Tuy Hoa City to book a room. After being consulted and introduced to discount packages, he transferred more than 13 million VND to pay for 6 rooms at the resort and immediately after that, he was blocked by this fanpage. Mr. L checked and contacted the reservation department of Stelia Beach Resort and found out that the fanpage he had just paid for the room was fake.

Ms. Le Ngoc Dan, in charge of the Stelia Beach resort reservation department, said: Currently, there are many fake fanpages impersonating Stelia Beach resort's fanpage on the internet. These fanpages use the unit's images to post, advertise cheap room booking costs with attractive promotions, so many people fall into the trap.

In the past 2 months, 6 customers have been tricked by fake fanpages into transferring money to book rooms with the amount lost from more than 1 million to more than 13 million VND/customer. Not to mention many customers called the resort's hotline to verify the accommodation they had deposited. We are currently working with Facebook/Meta to report and handle fake pages; register for blue ticks (verified badges on Facebook) to create recognition for customers, optimize the website to the top of search results. On the unit's fanpage, we also post and pin warnings about fake fanpages to help customers have more information...

Major To Hoai Phong, Deputy Head of the Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention Department (Phu Yen Police) said: Creating fake fanpages of hotels and resorts is not uncommon. Many subjects have set up websites and fanpages with names and interfaces similar to reputable businesses, even with blue ticks to increase reliability. Although businesses have made efforts to report and take down fraudulent pages, new pages continue to appear, trapping users.

Be on guard

After transferring 1.3 million VND to deposit a room at a hotel in Mang Den (Kon Tum), Ms. Ho Thi Hong Hanh in Ward 5 (Tuy Hoa City) was informed by the hotel that the booking code was incorrect and that she needed to contact the accounting department to get her money back and transfer the money back to the correct booking content.

“However, when I asked for a phone number to contact, they said they could only add me via messenger and instructed me to enter a link to get a refund. Because I had read news about this type of scam, I carefully checked again and contacted the hotel hotline, only then did I realize that I had transferred the room reservation money to a fake fanpage,” Ms. Hanh shared.

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Hiep, a pork seller at Ward 7 Market (Tuy Hoa City), every time a customer transfers money, she carefully checks the balance to see if the money has been transferred to the account. It may be a little slow but she avoids being scammed. Previously, Ms. Hiep lost 1.7 million VND in cash and 2kg of meat to a scammer.

The person who tricked Ms. Hiep into going to the counter to buy 300,000 VND worth of meat and transferred 2 million VND to her, taking back the change of 1.7 million VND. This person had prepared a photo of the bank's successful transfer transaction to show Ms. Hiep to prove that the money had been transferred. Due to subjectivity, Ms. Hiep did not check her account balance again and gave the change to the subject. After a long time without seeing the money in her account, she realized she had been tricked.

People should be careful, not share personal information online; always check the authenticity of websites, social media accounts or emails before providing information or transferring money; do not download strange applications or access strange links; activate two-layer security for email accounts, social media and bank accounts to increase the level of security.

Major To Hoai Phong, Deputy Head of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention Department (Phu Yen Police)

To protect themselves and avoid sophisticated scams by bad guys, users need to improve their knowledge and be vigilant when operating in the digital environment, regularly monitor and update warnings from authorities about scams and methods, and master the signs of scams to recognize and prevent them in time.

According to Major To Hoai Phong, when making any online transaction, people need to ask their partners to provide their business license and related documents for verification; should carefully check business information and account numbers against related documents; be wary of offers of cheap prices or attractive profits... Absolutely do not follow requests or instructions to transfer money to subjects for reasons such as incorrect text message syntax, money being suspended on the system...

Source: https://baophuyen.vn/tin-noi-bat/202504/nang-cao-canh-giac-khi-hoat-dong-tren-moi-truong-so-a59163b/