Call to guide installation of fake VNeID application: New scam trick

Recently, in Kinh Mon town, the police force received complaints from people about the phenomenon of impersonating police officers calling to instruct on how to set up an electronic identification account. Specifically, on September 21, Mr. TVTh (in Quang Thanh commune) reported that a subject used the phone number 0813915416, claiming to be a police officer of Quang Thanh commune, asking Mr. Th. to follow the subject's instructions to set up an electronic identification account. Because Quang Thanh commune police had already propagated and instructed on how to set up an electronic identification account, Mr. Th. did not follow and replied that he would go directly to the commune police for instructions.

Previously, Mr. NVH (in An Luu ward) received a call from number 0921414093 claiming to be an officer of Kinh Mon town police asking Mr. H. to install an electronic identification account. When Mr. H. replied that he had activated level 2 electronic identification, the subject continued to ask Mr. H. to update his driver's license and vehicle registration documents. Suspecting signs of fraud, Mr. H. said he would go to the town police station to meet directly with a police officer for instructions on how to install it, but the subject quickly hung up and could not be contacted afterwards.

Fortunately, the two people mentioned above were alert and did not follow the instructions of the scammers. In fact, in other localities in the country, there have been cases where people trusted and followed the instructions of scammers, leading to the loss of money in their accounts, some people lost up to billions of dong.

The subjects often use the trick of calling people, introducing themselves as local police where the citizen is permanently residing; citing the reason of creating favorable conditions for citizens, citizens do not need to waste time going directly to the police agency but can still install and activate a level 2 electronic identification account on their mobile phones, then ask citizens to access a strange link to download a fake application with the logo of the competent authority.

After installing the application, the subject will ask people to grant all permissions such as accessing contacts, location, and accessibility on the phone. Immediately after the application is granted permission, people's phones will lose control. With access to accessibility, the subjects will monitor the user's operations on the phone screen, read the OTP code sent by the bank to the phone. After knowing the people's e-banking service login information, the subjects will log in to the e-banking application to steal money from the account.

In order to prevent, stop and effectively combat this type of crime, the police force recommends that citizens who have not installed and activated their VNeID electronic identification accounts should go directly to the local police, Project 06 teams at all levels to be guided on installing levels 1 and 2, integrating personal documents into the electronic identification account. The phone numbers of the local police and commune police are all made public to answer people's questions during the process of installing and activating electronic identification. Citizens who have successfully registered an account but have not yet activated it can use their smartphones to download the Ministry of Public Security's VNeID application to activate it or use a computer with an internet connection to access the website.https://vneid.gov.vn/and follow the instructions.

Currently, in addition to directly visiting citizens' homes and receiving citizens at commune-level police headquarters to guide them in installing and activating electronic identification accounts, commune-level police forces in the province continue to strengthen the deployment of mobile citizen reception teams and coordinate with village-level Project 06 teams to guide people in activating electronic identification. When encountering situations with signs of fraud, citizens need to immediately report to the police force for timely investigation and clarification.