Along with the explosion of digital banking and online transactions, cyberspace scams are also increasingly sophisticated, targeting many groups of subjects, including students and young people. Subjects often take advantage of events that are of social interest, combined with impersonation and psychological manipulation tricks to appropriate victims' property.
On March 8, at the Workshop "Safe banking transactions in cyberspace" organized by Tien Phong Newspaper, Captain Huynh Do Tan Thinh - Reconnaissance Officer of the Special Task Force, PC02 Department, Ho Chi Minh City Police said that people need to be especially vigilant against constantly changing scam scenarios and closely follow actual events in life.
In addition, impersonation forms account for about 90% of current fraud cases. Subjects can impersonate functional agencies, financial organizations or reputable service providers to build trust with victims.
According to Captain Thinh, in many cases, it is the fear of being handled by the school or being summoned by the police agency that has caused some students to lose their composure, leading to foolish acts such as staging kidnapping scenarios to extort money from their families.
The key to protecting yourself is to stay calm, identify unusual signs from strange calls and absolutely not let fear dominate actions in the face of unfounded threats" - Mr. Thinh emphasized.
From a banking perspective, Ms. Pham Chau Loan, Deputy Head of Digital Channel and Partner Development Department of Vietcombank, said that the strong development of technology in recent years has promoted the explosion of digital banking, significantly changing the way users make financial transactions.
With just an application like VCB Digibank, customers can transfer money, pay or manage accounts in seconds. Modern payment methods such as QR Code, non-contact cards, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay are also increasingly popular. Notably, cross-border QR payments have been deployed in some countries such as Thailand, Laos, China and are expected to continue to expand.
Currently, more than 95% of bank transactions are carried out on digital platforms, while ATM withdrawal transactions are gradually decreasing. However, along with this development, high-tech crimes such as fraud, data theft or account forgery are also increasing, in which young people and students are the group that is easily exploited due to lack of experience and sometimes subjectivity when transacting online.
Dr. Vo Tien Loc, Deputy Head of the Faculty of Accounting - Finance, Van Hien University (HCMC) said that students today are equipped with many soft skills, including skills to identify risks in society, especially violations of the law related to finance and technology.
To help students better understand criminal tricks, the school often organizes simulated trials based on real cases. For example, there was a case where an employee of a finance company took advantage of customer personal information such as citizen identification cards and addresses to create fake loan applications to appropriate money.
However, according to Mr. Loc, knowledge from the school is only the initial foundation, the most important thing is still the self-protection awareness of each individual. Students need to proactively equip themselves with risk awareness skills, maintain alertness when transacting and interacting on the network environment. "In the digital environment, prevention is always more important than handling the consequences. When an incident has occurred, overcoming it will be very difficult" - Mr. Loc emphasized.
