Impersonating the Traffic Police Department to send cold fines to fraudulently appropriate property

The Vietnam Cyber ​​Emergency Response Center (VNCERT/CC), the Information Security Administration, the Ministry of Information and Communications also said that, according to the system’s records, many people have recently received messages with the content: “You received a message from xxxxxxxxx at 09:28 April 6, 2022 with the content: This is the Traffic Police Department, you have a receipt to pay a fine. This is the last notice, call 102604 to hear back (Free). Details l/h 9090 (200d/p)”.

Many people, when receiving the above fake messages, were confused, afraid to follow the instructions of bad actors and fall into scams. Specifically, the subjects sent messages asking listeners to transfer money to a predetermined account or provide an OTP code to transfer money to their account with the cover of verification, investigation, and “cold penalty” handling.

At the same time, the scammer also asks the victim to keep a secret from his family, including bank employees, about the purpose of transferring money. When the money was transferred, people called back the phone numbers of the subjects, but they could not be contacted.

VNCERT/CC Center notes: According to the Law on Handling of Administrative Violations, Decree 100 of the Government stipulating the sanction of administrative violations in the field of road and railway traffic, Circular 65 of the Government. The Ministry of Public Security stipulates the tasks, powers, form, content and process of patrolling, controlling and handling administrative violations on road traffic by the Traffic Police, all cases of violation of order and safety. All traffic is detected through the monitoring system or professional technical equipment, and the traffic police force sends a written notice to the vehicle owner, or the violating vehicle driver requests to violation detection unit to handle (cold fine). When receiving a notice of violation from the competent authority, on the appointment date, the vehicle owner or the vehicle driver brings all the necessary papers to the police headquarters to work.

Therefore, VNCERTCC Center recommends that people absolutely do not provide or share personal information, background, identity card, phone number, bank account information, credit card (username, login password, OTP transaction authentication code, email address…) to anyone in any form.

When receiving a message with fraudulent or fake content, people are requested to immediately report it to the Department of Information Security, directly VNCERT/CC Center via message number 5656 or via website chongthurac.vn for information. This agency promptly coordinates with relevant units to handle.

Previously, in an exchange with ICTnews earlier this year, a representative of the Information Security Department, Ministry of Information and Communications made a forecast that phishing attacks will be one of the four main trends of cyberattacks in 2022, besides 3 other prominent trends include targeted attacks combined with sophisticated measures to spread malicious code to gain information of organizations and individuals; attacks on IoT devices, especially surveillance cameras, attacks on cloud platforms.

To better explain the cause of the sharp increase in fraudulent cyber attacks, an expert from the Information Security Administration said that Covid-19 has caused organizations and individuals to use the Internet more. Online fraud tends to increase markedly both in the world and in Vietnam. In addition to fraud to steal personal information, impersonating financial – banking institutions for online fraud is the most prominent. The most difficult thing is that many users still have limited digital skills and information security skills, so they are easily deceived.