Beware of SMS scams
Li Xing China 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)