Alert! The money-sucking app’s scam of 2024, along with how to check

Recently, there was news that the victim was on a phone call with the scammer for only 2 minutes and all the money in the bank account was gone! Royal Thai Police stated that no such technology existed, but the victim might be deceived with other tricks. ACU PAY will summarize the scamming tricks used by those scammers for you.

There are mainly 3 ways that scammers will use in scamming

Deceive victims to transfer money by themselves.
Attempt to trick the victim to get information to access into the account on the victim’s application.
Deceive the victim into installing a cell phone controller app to transfer the money by the scammers.
Lure the victim to accidentally enter the safety code or vital information for the transfer.

Scamers’ tricks

Although the Accessibility Service is not allowed to be used in the banking applications, scammers still have other ways to deceive people and take out the money from the victims’ account such as

Mobile phone number
ID Card number
PIN
SMS-OTP

It may start from having the victims fill in the information, phone number, and ID card number. The scammers will download the mobile banking apps on their phones, waiting for the PIN and SMS-OTP information obtained from calling to the victims. They will use some technique to trick the victims into downloading money-sucking apps, waiting for the victims to fill in the PIN that may be the same one as the PIN in the mobile banking account. The last important piece is SMS-OTP that the scammers will freeze the victims’ mobile screen, take control of our mobile phone, and eventually get the OTP information.

New measures by banks that force users to scan their face if the transfer exceeds the limit of 50,000 baht or 200,000 baht. The scammers can do the same by adding a face scan function to the money-sucking app. The function will videotape the victim’s face in various manners and collect them into file. Once the scammers have the clips, they can proceed as if they were the victim using the new phone with the old phone number.

However, banks are looking for new ways to prevent criminals, including disable SMS-OTP, disable access if other apps are in use, or force users to use only 4G or 5G with registered numbers to open the mobile banking app, not using Wi-Fi.

However, the call center scammers still can find the blind spot by acting like a Reverse Proxy or using the victim’s phones as a bridge to connect it to the mobile banking app. Then, the scammers will use Wi-Fi to connect to the victim’s phone and lets the victim use 5G to connect to the bank app, and suck money. Nevertheless, many banks have stepped up measures to prevent this to some extent.

Whether you are an Android or IOS user, you can be deceived

In fact, the mobile phone you use whether Android or iOS operating system, you can also get money sucked if you accidentally install a money-sucking application from a scammer’s link hidden in the form of government agencies, whether intentionally installed it or accidentally pressed it without knowing it.

How to prevent or check these money-sucking apps have a preliminary observation as follows.

How to check money-sucking app installed in iPhone

Go to Setting
Select General
Select VPN and Device Management
Take a look at the bottom of the VPN, if you go in and you have a management profile, just think that you might have been scammed. If it is the case of a large company that has a management profile installed with an iPhone distributed to employees, it may require expert advice to check.
Usually, a typical app installation in an iPhone is required through the App Store for initial security. However, there is still a loophole for scammers to install a Management profile, which is to accidentally push links and allow scammers to access information on our phones.

How to check money-sucking app installed in Android

Go to Setting (Cog) select > Apps and click the three dots on the top right corners, select submenu > Special Access
If the menu cannot be opened, the screen will immediately pop out to the home page, indicating that the mobile phone is already embedded with such an app.
The first thing to do is to disconnect the Internet immediately, then back up the critical data, then clean the phone by resetting the phone to the factory defaults.

Prevention

Do not download, install apps that are not on the Store, including clicking the links from unknown sources. Check the links before you click them every time.
Do not scan faces with programs from sources other than those certified by operating system developers who are Official Store (App Store for iOS and Play Store for Android, etc.).
When you are aware or suspect that you are talking to a scammer, it is not recommended to continue talking because the more you listen to the scammer, the more unconsciously you may start to fall into believing, including the risk of your voice being used to deceive others.
Avoid using the same code to unlock devices, especially mobile banking application access codes, to prevent accidental remittance codes from being pressed.

If you are suspected of being victims of online theft, you can call the AOC 1441 hotline, or report online notification (technology crime only) at this website.

www.thaipoliceonline.go.th

References from

medium / smartcitythailand / thaipbs