“An experienced hacker can collect 10,000 users’ accounts a day. Each account is priced at VND3,000-5,000. This means they can earn VND1 billion a month by selling the ‘corpses’ of these accounts,” said Tri Duc, an IT expert who works in the US and monitors many Vietnamese groups of hackers.

Experts see the tricks as only ‘rudimentary traps’, but tens of thousands of users fall into that trap every day.

“Not everyone is vigilant enough, especially those who often use dubious applications. The websites with pornographic content may have latent risks,” Duc said.

Vietnamese hackers also hijack international accounts for different purposes.

Facebook recently allowed Vietnamese users to connect personal accounts to create fanpages. This feature has been exploited by hackers for a long time. Hackers also prefer Indonesian accounts because of the ease and the high number of people in the country.

Selling ‘bogus’ accounts

After hijacking a user’s account, hackers change the names and replace the avatar with images of Vietnamese “hot” girls, then make friends with thousands of people.

The "raw" accounts, after changes in names and cover images, are called by Vietnamese hackers "change" accounts. They then se these accounts to create pages, and friends will become page followers.

They then combine the numbers of ‘likes’ from the pages. 

“The fanpages with millions of likes are sometimes offered for sale on MMO websites. Despite efforts made, Facebook still cannot settle the problem,” said Le Minh Hiep, who called himself a Facebook service provider. 

Also according to Hiep, hacked accounts can be used to gain Facebook’s confidence. In general, Facebook will trust accounts that have been operating for years and updating regularly. 

Once gaining confidence, the accounts will have a higher success rate in creating ads and sending spam messages than newly created accounts.

In addition, hacked accounts will be used as ‘zombies’ for trading likes, comments and video views.

“Some veteran hackers now own 3-4 million accounts of this type. They are sold to serve the tricks that dodge Facebook’s rules,” Hiep said.

In related news, a large number of Vietnamese online businesses utilising the social network as a trading platform has been affected as Facebook has just blocked API. Blocking API is believed to be a move to reaffirm the apology after the scandal of Cambridge Analytica company breaking into 50 million users’ personal information.

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Thanh Lich