Vu Khanh Ly, who lives in Thanh Hoa, was still upset when she recalled being scammed for two million VND when booking a room at the MiAmi Mountain Retreat homestay in Ta Xua via a fanpage at the end of January. Having been scammed once when buying online, Ly carefully checked the fanpage before agreeing to transfer 70% of the deposit, about two million VND. After that, the fanpage administrator sent a message saying the booking failed because the customer entered the wrong transfer content, causing the system to not be able to confirm the customer's name and code.
If she wanted to book a room, Ly had to transfer the deposit back and write the correct information, but she did not agree and requested a refund. She received instructions for a refund via the "VNPay receives refunds from businesses" feature. The 7-digit verification code "8996933" must be filled in the money transfer box - equivalent to more than 8.9 million VND, the content section must state the refund request.
"When I got there, I knew I was scammed," she said, adding that before blocking her contact, the scammers also sent her messages to tease her. After this time, Ly admitted that she was afraid to book rooms through fanpages and would choose safer methods such as through OTA channels if she needed to find a place to stay.
Also at the beginning of the year, Chu Thanh Ha, living in Hanoi, was scammed out of a deposit of one million VND with a similar trick when booking a room through the fanpage Seashells Phu Quoc Hotel & Spa. The subject also tricked her into transferring the deposit back with the content following the instructions for the system to confirm, but the female tourist realized and called the hotel directly to check.
According to Ha, scammers often run ads with attractive posts, attracting viewers to ask to book rooms. The script of exchanging with customers from the time of invitation to support refunds and rebooking rooms is professional, causing many people to fall into the trap. In addition, the account numbers receiving money of the scammers are all company accounts, creating prestige, like in Ha's case, the hotline number also has a four-digit 9 ending, so she trusts them even more.
"I heard a lot and was cautious but still got scammed," she said, adding that she should have cross-checked information on sites like Google before making the transaction. The amount of money she was scammed wasn't too big, but it still made Ha afraid to book rooms through fanpages because the scams were getting more and more sophisticated.
In early February, a tourist named Tan in Hai Phong reported being scammed out of one billion VND when booking a resort in Ninh Binh using a similar trick. In most cases of fraud through booking fanpages, when customers want a refund, the subjects often instruct them to receive compensation through the VNPay feature.
However, a representative of VNPay confirmed that it does not provide any booking services on social networking platforms and does not have a refund feature as the scammers have used to commit fraud.
"The impersonation of fraudsters causes financial damage to customers and seriously affects our reputation," said a representative of this unit.
Similar scams have occurred at many tourist destinations across the country, especially during peak periods. Since the end of last year, Serena Resort Kim Boi has twice discovered cases of fake fanpages being used to scam money transfers, with some guests losing more than VND20 million. Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh - Deputy General Manager of the resort - said that tourists should contact the accommodation directly, check the hotline and the website that has been notified to the Ministry of Industry and Trade before making transactions.
Ha Giang also recorded a number of scams in 2024 and a representative of Dong Van Karst Plateau Geopark said that fraudulent fanpages are often operated by people outside the area. Visitors "fall into the trap" because they are subjective and do not contact through official sources posted by the locality such as websites, management fanpages, and tourism promotion centers.
"Some of our pages also have thousands of followers, but fraudulent pages have too many tricks to attract tourists' attention," said the representative of the unit, encouraging tourists to carefully study the list provided by the competent authority.
In Vung Tau, since the end of 2023, the Department of Tourism of Ba Ria - Vung Tau province has received 6 documents from tourism businesses about subjects setting up fanpages impersonating hotels to trick tourists into booking rooms. Through monitoring and reflecting through fanpages and groups, the unit learned that there were hundreds of cases of tourists being tricked in sophisticated ways, carried out from servers abroad, causing difficulties in handling.
In addition to increasing reminders and communication, the Department of Tourism is building a tourism application for the province, in addition to the existing website and fanpage. Once completed, the department will increase communication and introduce tourists to official and reliable information channels to have a source to compare with fake fanpages.
According to Facebook security expert Vu Ngoc Anh, getting a blue tick (certification of fanpage ownership) from Facebook is not easy, but the black market has many sources to buy and sell blue tick fanpages for about 80 million VND. Many scam groups can buy these blue tick fanpages to serve bad purposes.
However, they often choose to use a normal fanpage, register a blue tick, then change the name to match the target page. The scammer group will "accuse" the copyright of the official fanpage to easily operate online. Mr. Ngoc Anh said that a fanpage being copyrighted can come from many reasons that are difficult to control, such as using music or images that are not copyrighted. In some cases, high-tech scammers can directly hack (take over) the official fanpage.
In case a fanpage has changed its name, visitors can check in the information section of the page. However, if the fanpage is hacked, Mr. Ngoc Anh said it is very difficult to distinguish between real and fake. This expert recommends booking rooms through OTA channels or calling directly, checking multiple sources for verification.
TH (according to VnExpress)Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/so-dat-phong-qua-fanpage-vi-lua-dao-tran-lan-404908.html
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