KUCHING, May 8: A 60-year-old Singaporean woman recently lost SGD20,000 to a survey scam after scanning a QR code with malware she found in a bubble tea shop she visited.
To get a free cup of milk tea, she scanned the QR code, downloaded a third-party app onto her Android phone and completed the ‘survey’.
Through the app she had downloaded, scammers took over her device while she was sleeping that night and transferred SGD20,000 from her bank account.
According to a news report by The Straits Times, the police and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore had warned the public in April this year against downloading apps from dubious sites.
They said confidential and sensitive data, including banking credentials, could be stolen through malware that was installed onto the victim’s mobile phones.
Meanwhile, the Singaporean police also alerted the public about phishing scams involving malware installed, especially on Android phones, in which the operating system software is open sourced and exposed to hackers. — DayakDaily
