As the 2025 Summer tourist season approaches, bringing with it a flood of tourists to Binh Thuan, the provincial police force has issued many announcements about the simmering problem that is at risk of becoming "common": fraudulent activities to appropriate property, cleverly disguised under the guise of fake websites and fanpages of genuine tourism service businesses in the area. This situation not only causes heavy financial losses to tourists but also spreads frustration and confusion, eroding trust in the safety and reputation of Binh Thuan tourist destination.
Faced with the increasingly worrying sophistication of fraudsters leading to many unfortunate consequences for residents and tourists, the Binh Thuan Provincial Police have issued a notice to the residents of Binh Thuan in particular and the entire country in general to protect themselves during the upcoming holidays. Specifically, the following fraud methods have been discovered.
As the peak tourist season approaches, Binh Thuan police warn of fraudulent activities to appropriate property through creating fake websites and fanpages impersonating service businesses.
Taking advantage of this problem, scammers use tricks to create fake websites and fan pages, with interfaces that are difficult to distinguish from the official fan pages of hotels/villas, resorts, and homestays with famous brands in provinces and cities nationwide in general and districts, towns, and cities in Binh Thuan province in particular. These fake pages often copy images, use posts of reputable hotels to sell tours at attractive prices, and run advertisements to confuse customers. During the process of approaching, the fake subjects enthusiastically advise to lure customers, then fake photos of receipts, booking confirmations, and urge customers to transfer deposits. After receiving the money, the subjects immediately block communication and delete all traces. To prevent and limit the activities of scammers using tricks to create fake websites and fan pages, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan recommends.
The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan has issued important recommendations for tourists to raise their vigilance and avoid the risk of being scammed when booking travel services online. Before deciding to book a hotel, villa, homestay or tour services through websites and fanpages on the internet, tourists need to pay special attention to carefully researching information about the supplier. It is important to evaluate the reliability and authenticity of that website or fanpage. Tourists should pay attention to checking the transparency of the published information, the history of the creation and operation of the page, as well as the area of operation of the fanpage administrator to have a comprehensive view and make wise decisions.
These fake pages often copy images, use posts from reputable hotels to sell tours at attractive prices, and run ads that confuse customers.
To ensure safety and avoid risks, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan recommends that tourists should prioritize choosing reputable travel and tourism service providers or using reliable websites and applications for booking hotels, villas, and homestays such as Agoda.com, Booking.com, Travoloka... Another safe option is to find fanpages that have been verified with a blue tick, showing their reputation and have been verified. Knowing information about the seller is also an important factor to help tourists feel more secure when transacting and being able to contact when necessary.
In particular, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan also warned tourists to be extremely vigilant with websites advertising unusual discounts on hotel rooms, especially during holidays. Invitations to buy travel packages at prices 30% to 50% cheaper than the average market price often pose a high risk of fraud. Tourists need to be alert and not rush to believe in overly attractive offers without carefully checking the information and reliability of the service provider.
For tourism service businesses, hotels, villas, homestays, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Binh Thuan province especially recommends regularly using the Google search engine to proactively review and check the existence of fake websites or fanpages of their establishments. This helps businesses promptly detect and warn tourists, and provide detailed information about fake cases to competent authorities.
When detecting any website or fanpage with signs of impersonation, tourism service businesses, hotels, villas, homestays need to quickly collect all relevant information such as links, contact phone numbers, bank account numbers used in the impersonation and send them to the Department of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention under Binh Thuan Provincial Police to serve the investigation and handling according to the provisions of law.
Tourism businesses need to build their own identification signs for their website and fanpage.
In addition, it is extremely important to strengthen the implementation of measures to secure information, images and administrative accounts for the official websites and fanpages of the facilities. Units should also build distinctive, distinctive identification signs for their websites and fanpages to help visitors easily distinguish and avoid confusion with fake pages.
To support people in proactively identifying and avoiding fraudulent websites, the Department of Administrative Police for Social Order (C06), Ministry of Public Security has updated the search instructions on the website built by the National Cyber Security Monitoring Center (NCSC) with the domain name tinnhiemmang.vn.
This information is also updated on the news section of the VneID application, providing a new and convenient solution for people. To look up information about websites with malicious links, people can follow these simple steps:
Step 1, access the addresshttps://tinnhiemmang.vn/website-lua-daoStep 2, in the provided search box, users just need to enter the domain name they want to check and then press the "Search" button. Step 3, the system will display a list of domains that have been identified as malicious or have signs of fraud. Users can rely on this result to check and proactively avoid the corresponding domains.
In case of encountering similar situations, people need to promptly reflect and report to the nearest police agency for reception, advice and guidance on how to resolve the issue. In addition, people can also reflect information through the reporting and recommendation function on the VneID application or directly through the police agency to receive advice, support and coordination with relevant agencies in the process of handling the case.
