Many new tricks
Two major banks in Vietnam including Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Industry and Trade of Vietnam (VietinBank) and Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) have recently warned customers about the cases where fraudsters use fake websites of banks to steal account information and appropriate customers’ money.
Accordingly, when accessing a link://homebank247.com, customers will be directed to a website with the same interface as the Internet banking login interface of Vietcombank and BIDV.
This, according to security experts, is the new trick of hackers to steal passwords and token for money transfer. Hackers will send SMS or an email to users’ email and request to change internet banking password for security reasons, along with a fake link. If the user logs in, all account information will be lost.
Most recently, Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) has continued to warn customers about the “corporate email hacking” of hackers to change beneficiary information on the transaction documents. If the person who makes the money transfer does not notice, the money then will be transferred to the account of the scammer without knowing.
“The customer then asked Vietcombank’s support to take the money back from the foreign bank. However, the possibility to claim back the money due to “email hacking” is very low because hackers often withdraw money from the account as soon as they receive the money or the procedures to claim money from foreign banks is very complicated”, said representative of Vietcombank.
Along with these new tricks, banks have also constantly given warnings about sophisticated tricks of fraudsters. For example, they entice people to open accounts and resell information. Accordingly, fraudsters use tricks to entice people to open accounts, cards, and register e-banking services such as Internet Banking or Mobile Banking and SMS Banking then buy those accounts for the purpose of defrauding other people without being uncovered.
Fraudsters may impersonate bank staffs, police investigators and representatives of management authorities to control or entice people to make money transfer, request people to provide information related to accounts such as Internet Banking, SMS Banking, registered phone numbers, etc., make them pay in accounts and then appropriate.
The tricks of fraudsters are increasingly sophisticated while banks still use less secure card technologies and many customers have not been aware of keeping card information. That has made Vietnam a destination for card crimes. In recent years, the police have arrested a number of foreigners who came to Vietnam for the purpose of faking cards to withdraw money.
The money losses in customer accounts are challenging banks. “In many cases, customers disclosed card information as they accessed to the fake links of fraudsters. Particularly for international payment cards, if the information is disclosed, fraudsters can easily make payment at car acceptance points. However, customers were unaware of this and after the incidents occurred, they sought compensation from banks and these cases were very difficult to be solved”, said a staff from a bank card centre.
One weakness of the Vietnamese card system is that most cards are still using magnetic card technology a technology that is easy to be copied. According to the plan of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), by the end of 2020, all domestic payment cards of Vietnam must be converted to chip cards with more security technology.
Currently, the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (Napas) is piloting the VCCS domestic payment card standard with six banks including Vietcombank, VietinBank, Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank), An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ABBank), BIDV, and Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank); three chip card providers, and six units providing card accepting equipment. However, according to these experts, this move is fairly late compared to the roadmap, while the roadmap of Vietnam is already slower than the world’s.
Recently, the Vietnam Bank Card Association (VBCA) has proposed the SBV to early issue the VCCS and guide the detailed conversion plan under a suitable roadmap. Accordingly, at the time of application, if the issuing bank or the payment bank fails to issue or accept the payment of a chip card, that bank will bear the full risk occurred due to the counterfeit card.
Agreeing with this recommendation, lawyer Truong Thanh Duc, Chair of the Board of Members of Basico Law Firm, said that depending on each case where the money of customers in their accounts is lost, the bank will decide to compensate or not. Nevertheless, in the cases where banks continue to use magnetic card technology which makes the fraudsters to easily steal customer data and withdraw money from customer accounts, those banks are responsible for returning money to the customers.
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