According to a report from the Information Security Department, fraud by spoofing SMS Brandname is one of them 24 most common forms of fraud as of the first half of 2023. So how to recognize and avoid this scam? Let's Anti-Phishing (CLĐ) learn more through the article below.
I. Current status of SMS Brandname forgery to commit fraud
SMS Brandname is a form of brand message, exclusively registered by organizations and individuals at telecommunications carriers and used as a service to send messages and make mass calls to customers for customer care and advertising. promote images, announce new content, policies... According to principle, when brand name messages and calls have been registered at carriers, other organizations and individuals are not allowed to register the same brand name. signal.
Previously, a common trick of criminals was to use any phone number (junk SIM) to spread fraudulent content and this behavior has been warned and propagated to consumers. However, recently, scammers have changed their methods, which is to fake messages and calls from the brands of banks and power companies.
More dangerously, these fake messages and calls are stored in the same folder as the bank's real branded messages on the user's mobile phone. Therefore, users, customers of banks, power companies... will easily be mistaken, thinking this is an official announcement from the bank or relevant agency. This is a very sophisticated and dangerous trick.
When you follow the instructions of these fake messages, scammers will easily obtain your personal information, account or property. Many people have been defrauded of hundreds of millions of dong by believing in fake bank messages.
II. Identifying characteristics and fraud tactics
The situation of fake Brandname SMS messages largely comes from subjects using fake BTS broadcasting stations to send a series of fraudulent messages to users with the purpose of appropriating property.
Phones have the feature of automatically connecting to BTS stations with strong signal strength. Due to this mechanism, the phones automatically connect to fake BTS stations that are broadcasting 2G nearby. The subjects put the device on a car or motorbike to move to crowded places, spreading messages to subscribers connected to the fake BTS station.
Each fake BTS device can spread up to tens of thousands of messages/day. This is an attack tactic that exploits the authentication weakness of the 2G network. Up to now, there is still no technical solution to completely prevent this risk. According to recorded information, the devices used to create fake BTS stations are devices floating into Vietnam without going through the official market.
III. How to avoid this fake scam
With this scam, you should note that banks, service providers, manufacturers, etc. will often ARE NOT Require customers to provide personal information via SMS, email, chat software, etc.
To avoid being scammed or misappropriated, you should note:
When receiving unusual messages, you must immediately contact the brandname's managing unit via the hotline. In addition, in case of fraud detection, users also need to save evidence and report to the telecommunications enterprise managing the subscription to request handling; Besides, provide the available evidence to the nearest competent authorities of the Ministry of Public Security to request handling of violations in accordance with the provisions of law.
And the important thing is, always call to verify the relevant company, organization, or bank, by finding contact information for their customer care department to ask them if the website or application is valid. Is it theirs or not!
IV. Recognize scam websites
When you receive a message from the "bank" asking you to log in to your account for any reason, be especially careful and carefully check whether the link in the message is a scam website or not. .
There are many ways to recognize fraudulent websites, you can apply some of the following:
Or you can Check with the Anti-Fraud website according to the following instructions:
In addition, you can directly enter the website link in the search bar to check.
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