Beware of calls instructing to activate VNeID

Hanoi City Police have warned about a high-tech scam involving impersonating district People's Committee officials to report incorrect population data and request corrections. Specifically, a resident received a phone call from a stranger, informing him that the data was incorrect, and asked him to go to Nguyen Co Thach Street (in Nam Tu Liem District, Hanoi) to make corrections. After that, the bad guys suggested instructions to change the data remotely to scam and steal personal information.

Fraudsters continuously call, impersonate employees and officials working at the People's Committee of the ward or district, inform victims about incorrect data; request to provide identity card information, urge them to make citizen identification cards... in order to appropriate users' personal information to carry out malicious purposes.

The Department of Information Security, Ministry of Information and Communications recommends that organizations, businesses and individuals should be vigilant when receiving phone calls from strangers, claiming to be officials of state agencies or judicial agencies, requesting investigation of cases, receiving money or requesting payment of unspecified fees or debts. People should absolutely not follow the requests or instructions of groups of subjects contacting by phone. When there is suspicion of fraudulent property appropriation, people should immediately notify the nearest police agency for instructions on how to handle the situation.

Along with that, the phenomenon of taking advantage of people not fully grasping information related to the installation of the electronic identification application - VNeID, scammers have continuously called, then sent links via social networking sites asking people to access and install fake applications, which have the same interface as the real application. After installing and declaring on the fake link, the bad guys will have full information of the people and proceed with the next fraudulent acts.

Faced with this situation, Ho Chi Minh City Police confirmed that all phone calls and contacts via social networking applications requesting and instructing VNeID activation are fake with the purpose of defrauding and stealing people's personal information.

The Information Security Department recommends that people should only install the VNeID application from official sources, absolutely do not provide personal information or access strange links on any media. The police only support people to activate electronic identification directly, absolutely not through calls or social networking sites. If there are questions about the VNeID application, people should contact the local police or the nearest police agency, or the hotline of the Ministry of Public Security or the police of their residence.

In addition, the Warning Bulletin posted at khonggianmang.vn also mentions other forms of fraud such as: Fraudulent appropriation of property through the form of requesting to buy goods to accumulate points to receive rewards; stealing Facebook accounts and then impersonating them to appropriate money; impersonating doctors to defraud people of medical treatment and selling medicine; calling for investment, buying and selling shares and then defrauding them of money; tricks of borrowing money online, having bad guys edit funeral photos because of overdue debts... People need to be alert, calm, share with relatives, seek help from the police if they detect abnormalities, signs of fraud to get help.