VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have continuously warned about the increased phishing in Vietnam, but Vietnamese have turned deaf ear on the warnings.

A recent survey of Kaspersky Lab showed that Vietnam is among the top 10 countries which have the highest phishing growth rates, while Vietnamese users have also been listed among the regular attacked users.

The security firm also said that the main goals in most of the phishing cases are the services provided by Yahoo!, Google, Facebook and Amazon

Though domestic and foreign security firms both continuously give warnings about the risks and show the ways hackers may use to cheat users, more and more cases still have occurred recently.

The simplest way favorably used by hackers is that they hijack users’ account, then chat with the people they can find in the friend lists, asking the friends to buy scratch cards for mobile phones for them.

The familiar tricks have helped evildoers swindle a lot of people. Most recently, in June 2013, the Thua Thien – Hue provincial Police arrested a group of people who specialized in hacking Yahoo nicks to do phishing. The “smooth missions” carried out by the group brought them several billions of dong.

Security experts noted that Vietnamese do not have the habit of protecting themselves against online scams, even when they join the big communities such as social networks.

Though BKAV, the leading Internet security firm in Vietnam has many times warned about the increased phishing methods on social networks, people would still open the links shared by hackers who try to “trap” them and steal personal information.

Phishing has been carried out on forums and the websites relating to e-commerce as well. Evildoers usually sell imitating and low quality goods, or set up “bogus” websites to lure buyers, while the goods do not exist in reality.

Security experts believe that mobile phones and online games could be the next targets of phishing.

According to Ngo Tran Vu, Director of NTS Security, the exclusive distributor of Kaspersky products in Vietnam, mobile phone users now face high risks which would increase strongly in the time to come.

Vu said the technology world has entered the post-personal computer period with the growing tendency of using Mobility thanks to the smart phone price decreases.

People log in Yahoo! or social networks such as Facebook, surf on Internet and carry out e-commerce transactions right on their smart phones, which would be the “easy prey” for hackers.

He has warned that the promulgation of the Decree No. 72 on the Internet service management, which resumes the licensing of online games would pave the way for phishing to develop.

A game distributor said in fact, a lot of phishing cases in online games occurred already. VNG, for example, once had to ask for the intervention from competent agencies, when its services and websites were counterfeited to cheat users.

In the VNG’s case, the problem could be settled with the agencies’ intervention. The thing he is worried about is that the phishing may occur right in the games between gamers.

He has warned that in Vietnam, “virtual assets” are not recognized by the laws, which makes it impossible handle with the cases.

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