Ministry of Public Security warns of new criminal tricks of brand text message forgery

SMS Brand Name is a brand message, registered exclusively by organizations and individuals at telecommunications networks and used as a service to send mass messages to customers, to take care of customers, promote images, notify content, new policies... According to the principle, when a Brand Name message has been registered at the network, other organizations and individuals are not allowed to register the same brand name.

Image of a bank being hacked by criminals sending Brand Name messages.

For a long time, the common method of fraud by subjects is still to use any phone number (junk SIM) to spread fraudulent content. This fraudulent behavior has been warned and propagated to people in many different forms.

However, recently, scammers have changed their methods and tricks by faking brand messages - SMS Brand Name of banks. More dangerously, these fake messages are stored in the same folder as the "real" brand messages of banks on users' mobile phones. Therefore, people and customers of banks can easily mistake this for an official notification from banks or relevant agencies. This is a very sophisticated and completely new trick.

The tricks of the subjects are: Through many different sources, after obtaining the customer information of the banks, the subjects will send fake SMS Brand Name messages to that customer. The content of these fake messages always includes links to fake websites managed by the subjects (these websites have names similar to the official websites of the banks), so people are easily confused and lose their vigilance. When users access the link in the message content, the system will automatically display a fake website, with an interface and logo similar to the official websites of the banks and will be required to fill in information such as: login name, password, OTP code...

Once they have the information, the subjects will be able to control the customers' online money transfer accounts and perform actions such as: transferring money, opening overdrafts, topping up credit cards, registering for online loans, etc.

Fake Brand Name Message.

The fake messages often contain:“Dear Customers! Your account will be suspended from service on November 1st. Please log in to http://www.***bank.top to update online immediately” or “Dear ***Bank users, your account points have been converted to gift conditions. Please log in to www.***bank.vip now to redeem the gift. If it is overdue, it will not be accepted”…

By the above methods, recently, the subjects have defrauded and appropriated the assets of many customers with huge amounts of money, occurring in many localities across the country. With the method of spreading fake Brand Name messages from banks, it is very difficult for customers to distinguish between real and fake. This method not only causes damage to customers' assets, affects the reputation of banks in particular and the payment system in general, but is also especially dangerous when it is exploited by bad subjects to fake official announcements of state agencies, sending distorted and untrue messages to people.

This is a completely new and very sophisticated trick, so people need to be more vigilant to protect their own assets, especially at the end of the year when the volume of transactions in bank accounts is very large, which is also the time when criminals increase their activities.

Ministry of Public Security warns:

- People need to carefully check the content of the messages received, including branded messages from the Bank, do not rush to reply or follow the content of the message. The official websites of organizations and businesses will be registered with the competent authorities and marked as safe with a lock icon next to the website domain name (https protocol).

- When receiving suspicious or unclear messages, people can call directly to the customer care center of the banks to check the information or ask for advice from experienced people; report fake messages to the Bank and the authorities for timely handling.

- People need to regularly change their Internet banking and Smartbanking account login passwords and have measures to manage and secure this information.