Be careful with the "QR code scanning" trick to hijack Zalo accounts

The message of the bad guy tricked me into scanning the QR code and then took over my Zalo account.

To carry out this scam, the subject created a Facebook account similar to that of an acquaintance on my friends list. Then, the subject texted me, "Do you use Zalo for this phone number?". When I replied "Yes", the subject immediately sent me a QR code and instructions to save it to my device and then use Zalo to scan the code to log in to a contest to vote for me.

Because I had read a lot of information and scams to take over accounts, I was very cautious. I went to that person's Facebook account to verify. However, this person was more sophisticated, copying many articles and pictures from my friend's Facebook account to post on the timeline, making the real and fake Facebook accounts look exactly the same.

Thinking that my friend was texting me, I immediately opened Zalo to scan the QR code that the person had sent. Immediately, my Zalo was logged in on the desktop and used in parallel with the Zalo account on my mobile phone. Almost simultaneously, the person sent an automatic message to a series of people in my contacts, with the content: "Your account still has enough 15 million, can you transfer it to this account number? Can you transfer it back early tonight? I have something to do and the card is broken."

Discovering something unusual, I quickly logged into Zalo using my computer and disabled the bad guy's device. Security verification in Zalo showed that the bad guy logged in using a computer from Quang Tri province.

This is a very sophisticated trick that criminals have used to commit fraud. Fortunately, people in my contact list who received messages from bad guys said they were not trapped. Many people informed me that their Zalo account had been hacked.

CAM LINH(Hai Duong City)