SMS scams should be nipped in the bud Li XingChina Daily Updated: 2005-10-13 05:55
I've learned to never take easy money since childhood. Anything too good to
be true is probably exactly that.
With this belief, I immediately delete from my cell phones the short messages
that inform me of my winning this and that, including 100,000 yuan (US$12,330)
in September.
But last Friday, an SMS I received at 11:39 made me nervous.
It read like this: A major State-run bank on the Chinese mainland (here I
would like not to name it) notifies that you, its customer, has just
successfully completed a purchase with your debit card worth 2,850 yuan (US$352)
at Hualian Department Store in Taiyuan. The bank will deduct from your account
this amount by the end of the month. If you have any questions, please call the
following phone number (with the area code of Taiyuan).
Taiyuan, capital of North China's Shanxi Province, is about 500 kilometres
away from Beijing. On that morning, when that purchase was said to have taken
place, I was in Beijing seeing my school alumni whom I had not met for nearly 30
years.
While I was catching up with my childhood pals, my husband made inquiries. He
was directed to a few phone numbers, including one for reporting cheating to the
local police handling economic crimes. He dialled the numbers and found he
seemed to be talking to people speaking in the same Cantonese dialect. That made
him suspect trickery.
When I returned home, I received another SMS, at 15:59. This time, it said
that I had just made a payment of 4,800 yuan (US$591) with my debit card at
Wal-Mart in Shenzhen and that the bank would deduct the amount from my account
by the end of this month. If I had any questions, I was to call the number (with
the area code of Shenzhen).
Two similar messages got on our nerves: What if someone had stolen my
personal information and what if I lost my credibility this way?
We got online and obtained the service phone number of the bank. We dialled
and could not get through. Despite the fact that neither of us had a debit
account with the bank, we drove to its nearest local branch. It was closed, but
we read every one of its notices at the door. None was informative.
So we went home and went online again, this time, searching for the key words
"SMS cheating." Voila! We got countless hits. My daughter typed "4,800 yuan at
Wal-Mart" into the search slot and also came up with numerous references.
On top of the hits is an article at the website, http://bjcert.bnii.gov.cn.
Posted on October 2, the article quoted Beijing police and said that similar
short messages first surfaced on September 7.
On September 23, a bank customer, Mr Li, got the SMS and called the provided
phone numbers. He was told that someone had opened several accounts with his
information and was laundering dirty money. He was advised to go to an ATM and
the person at the other end of the line would guide him to upgrade his bank card
and information security. Li dutifully followed the procedure, only to discover,
the next day, that he had been robbed of 51,260 yuan (US$6,320).
And only this Monday, Beijing Television broke the news and warned the public
of the scam. It reported that during the National Day holiday week, another
gentleman was cheated - he lost more than 180,000 yuan (US$22,190) from his bank
account.
He was not alone. Between September 30 and October 7, Beijing police received
more than 600 reports about such thefts via SMS that claimed to be from the
bank. One client lost some 310,000 yuan (US$38,220).
The ensuing facts illustrate how little the bank as well as the police did,
and how slow they were, to alert the public to such scams before it was too
late.
True, we live in an information age and the Internet carries warnings.
However, only one out of 12 Chinese people go online.
Considering the digital divide, the bank and the police should have adopted
several traditional measures. The police should have notified every form of news
media as early as possible.
As for this bank, and other banks as well, putting up warning posters right
beside the ATMs would have been very effective in alerting customers to the
danger. Only from Monday did such posters begin to appear in bank branches, or
next to ATMs.
Banks on the Chinese mainland should take the losses of their customers as a
hard lesson that they still have a long way to go to fully satisfy the needs of
the people they serve.
(China Daily 10/13/2005 page4)
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