Recently, several screen sharing fraud cases targeting student groups occurred in Shenzhen. Shenzhen City Banxin Inter-Team Fraud Center issued an early warning, urging students and parents to increase their awareness of preparedness and improve their anti-fraud capabilities.
Most of the victims of these incidents are middle school students, aged 12 to 18, and they all started from being scammed while purchasing or selling online.
The police revealed ‘Part 3’ of the screen sharing scam. First, gain trust by disguising your identity. Fraudsters impersonate the identities of public security officials, prosecutors, courts, banks, and e-commerce platform customer service agents and use personal information obtained in advance to create scams and accurately defraud victims. After contacting the victim via phone or Internet chat tool, they steal the victim’s trust for various reasons (for example, account abnormality, suspicion of involvement in money laundering, product quality issues, etc.). Second, encourage people to download screen sharing software. After gaining the victim’s trust, the scammers induce the other party to download meeting software with screen sharing functions, such as Zoom, Teams, Tencent Meeting, QQ, and Dingding. These software can generally be downloaded through regular channels, but scammers encourage victims to download them by sending links or QR codes from unknown sources. Third, open screen sharing to steal information. The scammer asks the victim to open the screen sharing function for various reasons, such as operation guidance and information confirmation. Once screen sharing is opened, all information on the victim’s phone (entered password, received text verification code, etc.) appears in real time on the fraud group’s facilities. Fraudsters use this information to steal victims’ property or carry out other illegal activities.
The police requested the following: Regular organizations or platforms do not verify information or solve problems through screen sharing, so if they ask you to download screen sharing software or open the screen sharing function, you should flatly refuse. When purchasing or trading products, you should choose a regular and well-known platform or route, complete the transaction within the platform, and do not easily trust offline transaction requests from strangers. Once you discover that you have been scammed, you must immediately report it to the police, leave relevant evidence, and report the fraudulent activities of illegal elements on relevant platforms.
