This was heard at today’s workshop ‘Preventing and combating fraud in cyberspace’ in Hanoi. The event was organized by the National Cyber Security Association, under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Public Security which revealed that 1,500 cases were prosecuted for cyber frauds.
Speaking at the opening of the conference, Lieutenant General Luong Tam Quang, Deputy Minister of Public Security, Chairman of the National Cyber Security Association, said that frauds in cyberspace in recent times have become very complicated, causing serious consequences for organizations and individuals, with negative impacts on development, requiring early and comprehensive assessment and comprehensive solutions for effective prevention and containment.
In Vietnam, cybercriminals continuously changed their methods and tactics in 2023 by thoroughly taking advantage of new technologies to attack, infiltrate, and commit large-scale fraud, causing huge economic losses and adversely affecting social order and safety, threatening people's lives. According to statistics, the rate of users receiving fraudulent messages and calls was 73 percent.
Senior Lieutenant General Luong Tam Quang also said that the fight against crime using high technology shows that the activities of criminals are very professional and they work in groups. Ring leaders are often foreigners, residing in neighboring countries, defrauding, coercing, manipulating, and seducing Vietnamese people to go abroad to commit crimes.
Victims of online fraud are mainly the elderly, students, workers with unstable jobs, low income, and even children. These are people who already use smartphones to surf the internet with a lower ability to recognize signs and acts of fraud; therefore, they are susceptible to taking advantage of their gullibility and greed to commit fraud, said Senior Lieutenant General Luong Tam Quang.
Tran Quang Hung, Deputy Director of the Department of Digital Economy and Digital Society under the Ministry of Information and Communications, commented that in the recent period, the Government has been accelerating digital transformation, and bad guys are also constantly taking advantage of modern technologies to appropriate people's property online.
During this time, the Ministry of Information and Communications' information security warning portal received nearly 17,400 reports of online fraud targeting Vietnamese internet users. In particular, the total amount of money people were scammed was recorded as more than VND300 billion.
Scam victims tend not to provide the full amount of damage, so the real amount may be higher than VND300 billion from more than 17,400 cases of online fraud in 2023. However, the most recorded cases of fraud resulted in losses of more than VND10 billion, said Mr. Tran Quang Hung.
At the seminar, Lieutenant General Nguyen Minh Chinh, Director of the Department of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control (A05) of the Ministry of Public Security, said that in the face of complicated developments of fraudsters who appropriate property online, A05 has determined that the fight against this requires the participation the entire machinery of the state, authorities, ministries, agencies, businesses and people. In 2023, A05 detected more than 3,500 frauds, causing great damage to people.
