On January 11, the Aichi Prefectural Police arrested three fraudulent groups on suspicion of illegally using NTT DoCoMo's "d Payment" service based on illegally obtained credit card information. The fraudulent group purchased and sold a total of 1.9 million yen worth of notebook PCs and other items at a consumer electronics retailer in the prefecture.

　The abused credit card information was stolen by smishing. Smithing pretends to be from a courier company or telecommunications carrier and sends SMS such as "I have brought your package home because you were absent" or "You need to update your membership information", and steals your account information on a fake site to which you are directed. This is one of the phishing scams.

・Related article “Fraudulent methods pretending to be home delivery have been upgraded” https://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/column/dlis/1158296.html

　The fraud group seems to have divided roles in detail. First, the credit card information obtained by smishing by the main criminal was linked to d payment. "Kaikoyaku" buys and resells home appliances with the d payment. There are also "shippers" who receive packages purchased with the card.

　The executives other than the instructors are the people who recruited and applied for dark part-time jobs on SNS. Part-time job fee is 30,000 yen once. At first glance, it looks like a good income, but in the end you will be arrested.

　Some people limit their use so that they can't make expensive purchases with their credit cards. In that case, one of the culprits will call the cardholder. It seems that they have been able to obtain more personal information necessary to lift usage restrictions by pretending to be staff of the waterworks bureau and others, and to be able to make high-value payments.

　If the usage limit could not be lifted, I purchased and resold bags and sneakers for the amount within the limit. A woman was victim of fraudulent use of 93,000 yen and purchased 3 Nintendo Switch units. So far, the criminal group has illegally used more than 41.7 million yen in total.

　NTT DoCoMo plans to provide all DoCoMo users, including ahamo, with a "dangerous SMS rejection setting" that automatically rejects SMS that may lead to phishing damage from mid-March 2022. From spring 2022, Softbank, Y!mobile, and LINEMO users will be able to provide new features such as ``Reject spoofed SMS'', ``Reject SMS with URL link'' and ``Unsolicited SMS filter'' as anti-spam measures. It seems that both KDDI and KDDI will add similar functions.

However, if you are using a telecommunications carrier that does not provide these functions, such as a cheap SIM, you will need to deal with it yourself. The characteristic of smishing is that it is very difficult to detect on your own. It's hard to tell because fake messages sometimes arrive in SMS threads that used to come from legitimate businesses.

If you want to protect yourself, just follow the basic rule of "do not open the URL in the message". Even if it says "Your account needs to be updated" or "It may have been accessed illegally", ignore it. This will prevent you from being redirected to fake sites. If you are unsure, check the status of your official service account yourself or contact the service provider.

　In addition, you must check your credit card and bank account frequently and respond immediately if you become a victim of fraud. NTT Docomo will compensate you for the full amount of fraudulent damage caused by d payment if the conditions are met, but there are various conditions. Please note that if too much time has passed since the fraud, you will not be eligible for compensation.

　This time, fraud was discovered in d payment, so measures will be taken for d payment. However, cybercriminals are also looking for loopholes in other payment methods to commit online fraud. It is important not to neglect the basic security measures such as not opening the URL of the message and checking the credit card history every month.

Your parents may also be prey to "Internet fraud" - By spreading awareness of the latest tricks, we aim to improve the digital literacy of the elderly and eradicate the damage caused by Internet fraud. let's In this series, we introduce examples of damage caused by Internet fraud based on information provided by the Digital Literacy Improvement Institute (DLIS). We will also explain how to deal with it.

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*Inquiries about internet fraud are increasing. In the unlikely event that you are a victim of Internet fraud, please refer to the following article to deal with it Reference: What to do and not to do when you are victim of Internet fraud