News about money scammers is constantly heard in the society, especially, in this digital era that scammers always look for new ways and methods to scam the victims such as scam SMS, scam emails and scam Facebook accounts. Apparently, the digital platforms that we use every day and have become parts of our lives would be chosen to commit such crimes as they are so mundane to us that we would not take a second to doubt. Of course, the popular LINE chat application is not spared. LINE chat application has become a common and convenient platform that business owners, including banks, use to connect with their customers. Scammers, thus, take this chance to create fake LINE accounts to get important personal information from the victims and use that information to steal money from the bank accounts without the victims realizing. Therefore, be very cautious and careful while giving personal information to others. Nobody would want to let others take away their hard-earned money without their permission. Don’t you think so?

The methods to scam and how to investigate

It all started with the scammer creating a fake account and name it similar to the official bank account. After that, they will start a conversation with the target, asking the target to verify their identity by ID number and date of birth. If the target believes and surrenders their personal information, they automatically become a victim. So, now, let us have a look on how to investigate if the LINE account is real or fake.

1. THE scam LINE account will be an initiator. A scam account will add a victim as a friend first. The mentioned account will appear on the “add friend” section, which means the target and the scam account are not friends on the application. However, the real official account can never be an initiator as they have to wait for the customers to add them as a friend.

2. Scam LINE account will not have a blue or green shield symbol in front of the account name while the official account will have one stated clearly in front of their account name. This shows that it is a premium account or an account that has been approved by LINE Thailand and can be trusted.

When we are certain that the LINE account is a scam, it is recommended that we report this account immediately. We might also want to block that particular account to prevent them from getting information from us. To make sure that the LINE accounts that we communicate with are real, we should add them via trusted sites like official websites of those particular brands.

For official SCB LINE account, please follow the links below:

LINE SCB Thailand http://line.me/R/ti/p/@scb_thailand

LINE SCB Connect http://line.me/R/ti/p/@scbconnect