Domestic banks have recently been warning their customers about new online scams.

Banks have warned customers about information theft (Photo: thebank.vn)

The Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) this week sent a notice to its customers to sound the alarm over scams via Zalo and Facebook, noting that along with the rapid development of social networking sites, online crime was on the rise.

According to BIDV, some criminals used fake images of name plates, seminars and other activities with the BIDV logo to pretend to be bank staff to cheat customers. They then promised loans of under 100 million VND (4,300 USD) providing a fee of 1-2 million VND was paid in advance. 

BIDV has advised customers to be vigilant and always verify all offers from strangers. In no circumstance should they transfer money to any other organisation or individual.

The Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) has also sent an email to customers warning them about information theft. Fraudsters have been impersonating bank employees and service providers, especially e-wallets, and asking customers to authenticate their account information to upgrade the services.

Warning its customers, the Nam A Joint Stock Commercial Bank said Vietnam had witnessed an increase in bank fraud. Recently, a gang used loopholes on the website of a payment intermediary company to steal money from genuine customers.

Nam A Bank cited statistics from the National Monitoring Center for Cyber Safety and the Ministry of Information and Communications, saying that there were more than 10,220 cyber attacks on information systems in Vietnam last year.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, in the first six months of this year, thousands of computers were infected with malware and more than 2,500 websites and information portals with national domain names were attacked.