M’sian Woman Loses RM10k After Downloading App To Watch Pirated Content

Recently a Malaysian doctor shared her experience of being scammed out of RM13,000 from her CIMB account, all without receiving any OTP. There has also been a rise in people receiving messages posing as government departments, agencies, and financial institutions.

Besides cyber-crimes, recently the police reported that there are 168 Malaysians stranded overseas, having fallen victim to overseas job scams syndicates while a senior citizen lost a whopping RM1.34 mil in a Macau scam.

Smartphone users must especially be vigilant about downloading dodgy apps as many syndicates use these high-risk apps such as those offering pirated content as a way of obtaining valuable information to access your bank account.

As reported by The Rakyat Post, a Facebook user Aisyah recently shared of her and her husband’s experience being scammed out of a total of RM10,000. Scammers are now getting victims to download APK files – file formats for applications used on the Android operating system – with fake mobile apps.

Ni bln slh apps iptv. Ni dia jumpa seller yg scammer. Aku pakai iptv elok je beli code dr shopee. Xde issue scam. Iptv ko kena bayar dlu bru dpt code tp cerita org ni, dia dpt code dlu bayar. Link iptv dia pn mcurigakan sbb xde nama iptv lgsung. Tp benda dah jadi kan. Hti2 guys. https://t.co/hswPtbJmej— FFUK-FunFutsalKerang (@FutsalKerang_PJ) August 20, 2022

It started off with Aisyah wanting to terminate her Astro subscription, so she started searching for Internet Protocol television (IPTV) applications on Facebook. She came across a ‘premium 5G TV’ profile offering pirated content – which no longer exists, probably due to someone having reported it – and started chatting with the seller to try out the app.

After chatting with the seller, they sent Aisyah the app through Whatsapp for her to download and sign up. She first tried it on her iPhone but as she was unable to open it through her iPhone, the seller advised her to open it using an Android phone. Unwittingly, she followed the seller’s instructions and sent the app to her husband’s phone.

After signing up, they tried to make payment using their Maybank2u account and password. They first tried using Aisyah’s username and password twice but were unsuccessful. They then tried using her husband’s account but similarly unable to do so, so they gave up on the transaction.

The next day when Aisyah tried to make a transaction, she realised that money from her account had disappeared. There were two transfers to her husbands account totaling RM5,000 each and she immediately called her husband to check.

Following that, she called Maybank for clarification as she did not understand how any transactions were made considering that she did not receive any Transaction Authorisation Codes (TAC) numbers via text. After the Maybank personnel asked her if she had downloaded any apps recently, she immediately realised that she had been scammed.

The app in question was malware and had detected their Maybank2u username and password when they had attempted to make transactions. Strangely, the RM10,000 had been transferred to her husbands account but then withdrawn to a Shopee account which caused them to be unable to trace the transfer of their money, causing them to be scammed.

Thankfully, Aisyah had placed a daily transaction limit on her account, or she might have been scammed out of a further RM10,000 if she had realised what had happened a day later. She warned everyone not to download any suspicious apps, to reduce their bank account’s daily transaction limits and to increase the limit only when necessary. After doing a quick Google search, her husband realised that these scams are nothing new but have occurred previously.

Guys, make sure you are aware about frauds and take the time to read up about security awareness. It never hurts to be too careful!

Have you fallen victim to any scams before? DM us or email at [email protected]

Image source: inc.com

---

Rojak Daily is a media entity owned by Astro and in the light of this scam (and many like them) we'd like to advise our readers to avoid subscriptions to illegal content.