VietNamNet Bridge - Phony service providers are invalidating and closing Facebook accounts for VND2-3 million payments. The practice is being used against business rivals or for personal revenge.

“Last month, I discovered an account just like mine. Just two days after the discovery, I received a notification from Facebook that my personal account had been locked because of impersonation,” said T. T. Trinh, a real estate trader whose Facebook account has 20,000 followers.

“This has seriously affected my business. Most of my clients are friends on social networks,” she complained.

In Vietnam, so-called ‘Facebook service providers’ have invented a new kind of service called ‘account ripping’. Little-known hackers provide the service for just VND200,000. 

Phony service providers are invalidating and closing Facebook accounts for VND2-3 million payments. The practice is being used against business rivals or for personal revenge.

Service providers will require bigger money to revive a Facebook account. The price is VND2.5-4 million.

Facebook allows people to report others for violations of its rules, including impersonation and underage users (under 14 years old) in accordance with Spanish and South Korean laws.

“Reporting impersonation has the highest success rate,” said Mai Thanh Phu of HCM City, who has deep knowledge about ‘Facebook services’.

Hackers will create an account with the same name as the victim’s name and will make friends with people on their friends’ list. The forged account must have the same names, avatar, photos and personal information as the information of the real account. 

They will then submit forged photos and documents to prove identity, such as identity cards and driving licenses, to legalize the forged account, through a link given by Facebook.

In the next step, ‘service providers’ will denounce the victim for forging and wait for Facebook to verify information and close the real account.

While there are many ways to report account owners’ violations, there is only one way to revive accounts. 

Facebook will request accounts’ owners to submit documents for verification. However, even with the necessary documents, in many cases, the real owners of accounts won’t succeed in reviving their accounts.

“I took pictures of myself and sent identity cards to Facebook three times, but my account still cannot be revived,” Thao Giang, a student in Binh Thanh district of HCM City, said.

In related news, Minister of Information and Communications Truong Minh Tuan during a working session with a Facebook delegation led by head of global policy management Monika Bickert in Hanoi on April 26 asked Facebook to increase cooperation with Vietnam to block and remove bad content and fake news in this social network.

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