Impersonating a shipper: A sophisticated scam after calls

Online shopping entails many other habits, such as asking the shipper to hold the goods or drop them off at your home; then the shipper will send a message with the transfer information; once the shipper's message is received, the buyer immediately transfers the money.

Taking advantage of this habit, these subjects impersonated shippers to steal money from many people.

Cheating husband cheats

At around 10:00 a.m. on July 5, 2024, Kim Oanh (21 years old, Da Nang ) was "cheated" by her husband for nearly 8 million VND. The "Shipper" texted the transfer information, then called to urge: "Please transfer the order quickly so I can place another order." As usual, Kim Oanh transferred the money immediately without checking the product information.

The image records the process of the fake "Fast Delivery" subject deceiving Kim Oanh.

Two minutes later, Kim Oanh received another call from the "shipper" saying, "I'm sorry, I sent the wrong company account number. Sending money there means successfully registering to become a member. Every month, 3.5 million VND will be deducted. If there is no money, it will be considered bad debt."

Then, Kim Oanh received from the "shipper" a fake link "Fast Delivery Customer Care".

Panicked and worried, Kim Oanh quickly clicked on the link. Immediately after, a department called Fast Delivery called and instructed Kim Oanh to cancel her membership by converting her personal account to a business account. To do this, log in to the banking app, enter the verification code XXXXX in the transfer amount section, hold the transfer button for 3 seconds, then press transfer.

In fact, this action was tantamount to a normal money transfer. Kim Oanh was skeptical but still pressed the transfer button. The result was that the money was not transferred to the business account and was still lost. The shipper even called her and said loudly: "Didn't you follow my instructions?"

Disappointed, about 15 minutes later, a person claiming to be the head of the Fast Delivery Department called Kim Oanh and promised to help get the money back. The other end of the line was bustling with people talking as if this person was in the office; there was a scolding voice saying "this shipper is not good at working like this". As a result, Kim Oanh lost more money. At this time, Kim Oanh was surprised to realize that she had been scammed.

In another case, at around 4:00 p.m. on July 8, 2024, NY (21 years old, Dong Nai , student in Ho Chi Minh City) was also scammed by a subject impersonating a shipper from the Giao Hang Tiet Kiem (GHTK) shipping unit for 3.6 million VND.

In July 2024, TU (17 years old, Quang Ninh ) and LD (30 years old, Ho Chi Minh City) also encountered similar scams but luckily stopped in time when the subject asked them to hold the confirmation code. The scam was exactly the same as the one that made Kim Oanh fall into the trap.

Many people shared their experiences of being scammed by this form on Facebook groups called GHTK and the Threads network user community.

The Perfect Psychological Manipulation Scenario

When recounting their stories of being scammed, all four victims expressed helplessness, anger and injustice. Kim Oanh confided: “The whole morning, I was hypnotized. My emotions were completely dependent on their every word and action. From rushing to transfer money when urged, worrying and fearing when hearing that I was about to have bad debt, to panicking because I lost millions due to a system error.

What upset me the most was when I was almost at a breaking point, the call from the person claiming to be the department head was like a ray of hope to save me. He criticized the way the staff worked, and understood the difficult life of students. With the mentality of wanting to get my money back, I completely listened to him.

“As someone working in the media industry, I have read a lot of scams online, but I don't know why I was still caught off guard at that time,” LD said.

With , Master of Psychology Duong Thi Thu Ha, Deputy Director of the Institute of Life Psychology, affirmed that this is a trick of creating a scenario to manipulate psychology. Most manipulators clearly understand the psychology and weaknesses of the manipulated person. In this case, the purpose of the calls mainly hits the basic fear of people: fear of losing money, fear of the law, fear of being famous, fear of debt, fear of losing honor...

According to Ms. Duong Thi Thu Ha, when encountering suspicious cases like the above, to handle them effectively and safely, the person being scammed needs to calm down, breathe, change their body state to regain their composure, and not let themselves be swept away by threats. After getting out of the state of panic, you can go online to read more information. There are currently too many cases of manipulation and huge losses; think about the news online and be suspicious; share and ask more relatives and friends to help solve this problem, absolutely do not hide it and do it alone.

Take strong action against data security violations

Recently, the Ministry of Public Security has discovered hundreds of individuals and organizations involved in the sale of personal data. Several large-scale personal data appropriation and trading rings in Vietnam have been fought and handled.

The largest amount of illegally collected and traded personal data ever discovered is nearly 1,300 GB, with billions of personal data, including many internal, sensitive personal data.

On April 17, 2023, the Government issued Decree No. 13/2023 on personal data protection. Violations of personal data protection regulations, depending on the severity, may be subject to disciplinary action, administrative sanctions, or criminal prosecution.

Fraud scenarios are increasingly sophisticated

The scam scenario is elaborately set up, but the reason why many people lose their vigilance and fall into the spiral of being scammed comes from the unexpected understanding of the subject about information and shopping habits of each person. This raises questions about the problem of leaking personal information of users.

This is the concern of many people, including ECCouncil security training, MSc. Pham Dinh Thang. Mr. Thang expressed: “For me, the disclosure of personal information is a problem that makes me very upset. User information is not completely secure, from basic information such as full name, phone number, date of birth... to information about things and events that happen every day in people's lives such as banking transactions, purchases...

There are transactions that have just happened, but immediately after that, someone calls and tells very close information, making many people think they are the same person. I am very confused about where it came from and how it leaked.

According to Mr. Thang, the situation of buying and selling personal data information online is currently very complicated and widespread. One of the main reasons is the leakage of customer information from the .

"I hope the authorities will soon find a clear and comprehensive solution, from the reception stage, the processing stage to the stage of bringing these scammers to justice, severely punishing them" - Master Pham Dinh Thang emphasized.

Some popular scams

Some of the scams that criminals often use:

- Impersonating law enforcement agencies, leaders, bank employees, telecommunications officers;

- Impersonating financial and social insurance companies;

- Call terrorism;

- Get CCCD information;

- Fraudulent winning, giving lottery numbers to play;

- Hack Facebook;

- Do tasks through strange applications;

- Online shopping;

- Transferring money by mistake to force a loan;

- Looking for housekeepers, recruiting collaborators;

- Set up a virtual trading floor;

- Trick to upgrade 4G SIM;

- Transfer money to charity...

The forms and methods of fraud will be diverse and increasingly unpredictable. In the near future, the use of technology in transactions will become more popular; from buying and selling, exchanging information to carrying out administrative procedures. Meanwhile, the online channel is the channel where we are vulnerable to information forgery, individual or systematic fraud attacks...

To ensure personal data safety, each person needs to proactively prevent it by equipping themselves with knowledge, learning about fraudulent situations, and not working with unclear information sources...

On the part of the authorities, there needs to be coordination to raise awareness and disseminate knowledge about information security to the people; at the same time, strictly handle cases of violations of regulations on data security.

plo.vn

Source