Be careful with the trick of "post-merger information addition"

People need to be wary of deceptive tactics used in providing information after commune mergers.

Although she was cautious when receiving calls from unknown numbers, when the person on the other end identified themselves as an official from commune A, where Ms. Ng.TN lives, and provided fairly accurate information about her family and daughter, Ms. N. also lowered her guard.

The person on the other end of the line said that during the data update process following the commune merger, some information about her daughter, AP, who is about to enter 6th grade, was incorrect. To avoid affecting her daughter's rights regarding social security insurance (as the scammers claimed), she had to go to the commune's public administrative center to update the information within 3 days.

When Ms. N. said her family was busy, they gave her another phone number and asked her to call for assistance. Fearing she wouldn't have time to provide the necessary information and risk losing her daughter's rights later, Ms. N. complied. The next step was to trick Ms. N. into adding them on Zalo and following their instructions. Unsuspecting, Ms. N. followed the steps and clicked on the links provided by the scammers. As a result, all the money, over 3 million VND, in her account vanished.

Using the same tactic, Ms. HTP, residing in MT ward, received a call requesting her to visit the ward's public administrative center to provide additional information for her son's insurance application, as he would be starting high school next year. Hearing that the information about her son, including his home address and school, was correct, Ms. P. didn't suspect anything. On her way to work, she stopped by the public administrative center and called back the number that had called her, requesting a meeting. However, the caller hung up and blocked her number. Only then did Ms. P. realize she had been scammed.

"If I were at home, I would have followed the scammers' instructions and requests. Because I thought the information about my son was accurate and I heard that students would soon receive many benefits from the streamlining of the administrative system, I didn't take any precautions," Ms. P. said.

By obtaining information about students transferring to a new school level and exploiting their fear of losing benefits or facing difficulties in their studies if they don't update their personal information in time, many parents have been scammed out of money.

To easily gain the victims' trust and lull them into a false sense of security, in addition to providing accurate information about their children, they employ psychological manipulation tactics. When calling, they don't act aggressively or threaten, but only warn that failure to provide timely information will result in the loss of their children's rights. Furthermore, they don't require instructions over the phone but encourage people to go to public administrative centers for direct transactions. This makes the victims lower their guard, and then they manipulate them psychologically, leading them to call another person for guidance if they need to provide information online. From there, they lure them into clicking on links containing malware and steal money from their accounts.

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