At the Talk show "Protecting Privacy Against Technology Risks" held on April 3 in Ho Chi Minh City, Lieutenant Colonel Do Minh Kim - Deputy Head of Department 3, Department of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention (A05), Ministry of Public Security said that personal data is not only private information but also a "digital asset" with great economic value, exploited by both businesses and bad actors.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Kim, as soon as users search for a product on the internet, relevant advertisements will quickly appear on social networks, showing that personal data is being exploited to orient consumption. However, besides the legitimate purpose, personal data also becomes the target of high-tech criminals.
He cited a case of an information technology employee who, after resigning, copied customer data and advertised it for sale on online forums. Each set of data costs only a few million VND but is sold to many different groups, the subjects profit billions of VND. Another case in the southern region after the COVID-19 pandemic, the subjects invited workers to borrow money quickly, collect personal information and then open more than 200,000 illegal bank accounts, earning about 21 billion VND per month.
From the perspective of state management, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Binh - Deputy Chief of Office of the Ministry of Justice said that the most common situation is the collection and trading of information such as phone numbers, citizen identification cards, bank accounts to serve advertising or fraud. Besides, there are forms of impersonation of banks, state agencies or e-commerce platforms to steal user information. Statistics show that more than 88.5% of cyber attacks target personal accounts, with estimated damage of more than 6,000 billion VND in 2025.
This shows that people need to raise their vigilance when using social networks, proactively protecting their personal data from the risk of cybercriminal intrusion.
