If you click on such a link, please disconnect immediately!

Since November this year, false "vehicle recall" scams have occurred frequently.

Fraudsters impersonate the customer service staff of major car brands, and send false recall text messages to car owners on the grounds that "vehicle accessories have safety hazards", inducing car owners to click on the URL in the message or scan the QR code, and then commit fraud. Beijing police reported that more than 20 car brands have been faked, and some car owners were defrauded of more than 270,000 yuan.

Click on "Recall SMS", 270,000 is gone

The car owner received a message stating that the airbags in the car under her name had safety issues and needed to be recalled. If she did not handle the matter, she would face personal safety risks and the vehicle warranty would be cancelled. Ms. Zhang saw that there was a name, license plate number and website address inside, so she clicked on it without any suspicion. She opened the fake car company's official website and clicked the recall button. The customer service on the page gave three solutions. Since the offline solutions were all out of town, she chose “online claims settlement”.

The other party gave a link, saying it was supervised by the anti-fraud platform and executed by UnionPay. The fake UnionPay customer service guided Ms. Zhang to download the conference software and start screen sharing. On the grounds of identity verification, she asked her to provide Alipay and bank account information. On the grounds that Alipay did not have a corporate collection function and the transfer failed, she was guided to activate the "corporate collection" function of the bank card, and then transferred money to an unknown account and provided a verification code.

After Ms. Zhang completed the operation, she found that more than 270,000 yuan of funds in the card had been transferred. When the other party refused to return the money, Ms. Zhang realized that she had been cheated.

Linked to each other, three steps to lock in car owners

Based on the comprehensive case analysis, there are three main steps in the fraud scheme.

The first step is to send false recall notices through mobile phone iMessage, ordinary text messages and other channels to mislead car owners.

The second step is to guide car owners to click on the official website page of the high imitation to verify the vehicle information and put down their guard.

In the third step, the fraudsters "force" the car owners to contact "customer service" within a limited time, and guide the car owners to choose the refund model of online claims settlement and self-repair.

At this time, when the victim car owner contacts the "customer service" to request a refund, the fraudsters will guide the car owner to activate the bank card's corporate collection function by "swiping the transaction amount" on the grounds that the account provided does not have the corporate collection function and the payment fails. After the car owner is completely convinced, he uses "entering the transfer code" as a guise to defraud the transfer amount.

police tips

For formal vehicle recalls, notifications will not be sent through private mobile phone numbers, "iMessage", or overseas numbers. When car owners receive recall-related news, they should not directly click on the link in the text message. They must verify the authenticity through formal channels such as the car company’s official customer service, official App, and authorized 4S stores.

At the same time, official vehicle recalls only provide free maintenance services to car owners, and there are no vehicle repair subsidies, claims refunds, etc. Anyone who uses the name of recall to ask for "favorable turnover" or transfer money to a strange account is a fraud. You must be vigilant when encountering requests to download conference software, asking for bank cards and verification codes, or asking for bank card limits.

If you accidentally click on a suspicious link or enable screen sharing, please disconnect from the Internet as soon as possible and contact your bank to freeze your bank card in time to protect the security of your account. Once you find out that you have been cheated, please call 110 immediately for help.