Vietnam adopts measures to thwart online scams

HANOI: Vietnam is a country where people upload the largest amount of personal data to social media platforms, which have been exploited by cyber criminals.

That remark was made by Nguyen Hai Nam, director of Credit 360AI LLC, at the workshop “Avoiding risks when using digital banking services”.

He said cyber criminals employed deepfake technology to mine and steal personal data to create images of their victims, which was then used fraudulently, from impersonation to scam attempts.

“Users are recommended not to reveal their personal information online to avoid data leaks and identity theft,” said Nam.

He said Decree No. 13 on personal data protection had been introduced to keep the problem under control and it had achieved some results.

He urged the government to intensify the fight against online scams by keeping a closer watch on data transfer between enterprises to prevent data leaks.

He also urged users to be more cautious about data sharing and to protect themselves from data theft.

Vu Ngoc Son, technology manager of Vietnam National Cyber Security Technology Corp, said that cyber criminals had devised around 20 ways to defraud people online, including identity theft and e-transfer interception.

He cited a victim he knew as an example. The man was so cautious that he bought another smartphone solely for money transfers, in addition to the one for daily phone calls. However, his caution could not save him from malware.

Cyber criminals deceived him into installing malware on his smartphones without his knowledge. With the malware, they took over his banking account and initiated an unauthorised money transfer that he was powerless to stop.

“He took out a loan of two billion dong from a bank. When the money was transferred to his account, it was immediately re-directed to an unknown account without his permission,” said Son.

But online fraud like that will soon be thwarted thanks to the government’s efforts to improve data security.

The Information and Communications Ministry is working on a plan to phase out the 2G network, a network where authorisation is one-way only, making it conducive to fake SMS.

Do Minh Hoang, a management board member of Agriculture Bank Insurance JSC, said people living in rural areas had always been easy prey to online scams because they lacked experience in navigating online platforms.

“Most of the scams targeting people in rural areas are less than US$2,000 in value, low enough not to attract the attention of the authorities,” said Hoang. — Viet Nam News/ANN