In a video posted on Facebook on Jan. 14, a woman says a customer mistakenly transferred VND10 million instead of VND1 million to her husband. The person then provided a QR code with their bank details and asked him to return the excess, but her husband’s phone froze after he scanned it, she says. When it unfroze he found VND100 million had disappeared from his bank account, she claims.
The video quickly garnered over 1.6 million views, 3,500 likes and 23,000 shares, and many viewers expressed concern. One commenter wrote: "Scammers are becoming more sophisticated, moving from links and emails to QR codes."
But some questioned the story's credibility. Facebook user Thanh Dang asked: "Transferring over VND10 million requires biometric authentication, like facial recognition. Why wasn’t that triggered for VND100 million?"
Another user, Nguyen Hung, said: "Banking systems require multiple verification steps, especially for large amounts. This video is clearly just clickbait."
Cybersecurity experts too said the claim in the video is baseless. Vu Ngoc Son, chief technology officer at the National Cyber Security Technology Corporation, said scanning a QR code or copying account numbers would not directly cause a financial loss.
A QR code simply encodes data like links and bank account details, and whether a user is affected depends on how they interact with the content after scanning, he pointed out. "Risks arise only if users click on fraudulent links, install malicious...
Dive Brief: The Department of Justice recorded over $2.9 billion in settlements and judgments under the False Claims Act in 2024, with the majority of settlements coming from healthcare. Healthca...