Calls impersonating electricity threatens to ‘cut off power after two hours’

Some people received calls from people claiming to be employees of the Electricity Corporation, threatening to cut power and asking for personal information. The Northern Electricity Corporation (NPC) on the evening of May 18 said that it had received a report about the situation of people introducing themselves as company employees and calling users. Specifically, the impostor uses two main scenarios: the user notices “the power will be cut off within two hours of receiving the call”, or is in breach of a contract even though they are not directly performing the work. presently. Listeners are required to provide personal information for investigation. According to the NPC, this situation broke out on May 16 and 17, stemming from a few phone numbers belonging to the domestic mobile network. This is also the period when the North entered the hot period, the use of electricity became an essential need for users’ activities. “The call is intended to damage the reputation of the electricity industry or commit fraud,” the unit said. NPC recommends users not to provide personal information when seeing the above call. If you receive a call from an unknown number with the content asking for payment of electricity bills or information about an unexplained power cut, users should contact the customer care switchboard for support. In addition, they can access the website, application or text the electricity switchboard to look up information and use online services. According to Mr. Vu Ngoc Son, Technical Director of NCS Network Security Company, these calls are made with the purpose of collecting personal information of users to serve the next phishing campaigns. Similar to the scenario of impersonating the Department of Telecommunications “(subscriber key)(https://vnexpress.net/ro-cuoc-goi-lua-dao-doa-khoa-thue-bao-sai-thong-tin-4581976. html) after two hours”, the threat to cut off the power after two hours hits users’ anxiety with essential needs. Fraudsters often target issues related to direct interests, causing listeners to worry, panic and follow them unconsciously. In June 2021, the National Cyber ​​Security Monitoring Center NCSC also discovered that bad guys took advantage of the heat wave to make impersonated calls, asking users to provide personal information, money transfer, or create a website to post fake news about the activities of the electricity industry. Recently, the Ministry of Information and Communications has taken many measures to block spam calls and scam calls, but this situation has not been completely eliminated. After the period of standardization of subscriber information ended on May 15, the ministry said it would conduct a wide-scale inspection to handle the status of unregistered sims – one of the causes of the status of spam sims, calls, and calls. spam messages.