Criminals take advantage of tuition exemption policies to cheat parents out of money.

Taking advantage of the tuition exemption policy, criminals impersonate students to collect information, create groups to contact parents, initially ask for small amounts of money and then gradually increase the amount to scam.

At a seminar on the need and organization of cybersecurity training in Vietnam on September 25 in Hanoi , Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Xuan Toan, senior lecturer of the Institute of Non-Traditional Security, School of Business and Administration - Hanoi National University, said that cybersecurity issues are increasingly serious and have serious consequences.

Mr. Toan said that according to statistics from the National Cyber ​​Security Association and the Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention ( Ministry of Public Security ), there will be over 600,000 cyber attacks on Vietnam's information systems in 2024. Of which, there will be more than 74,000 cases on key national systems alone.

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Xuan Toan, senior lecturer of the Institute of Non-Traditional Security, School of Business and Administration - Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
Photo: Thanh Hung

According to Lieutenant Colonel Le Van Dinh (Criminal Police Department, Ministry of Public Security), criminals often take advantage of telecommunications networks and the internet to organize fraudulent activities. "This problem is very painful," said Mr. Dinh.

Mr. Dinh said that from 2019 to 2024, there were about 5,000 fraud cases each year. In the first 6 months of 2025, there were over 2,000 cases. The methods and tricks of operation are increasingly sophisticated and professional.

“Every time the government has a new policy, bad actors take advantage of it to create access channels that the government has not even had time to figure out. For example, taking advantage of the tuition exemption policy - which is a good policy - the actors collect personal information of students and contact parents to propose creating a group to enjoy the policy. When parents join, at first they only ask for a very small amount of money, then gradually increase it. After that, parents want to reclaim the money they lost, so they continue to transfer money, so the amount of money lost becomes larger and larger,” said Mr. Dinh.

Lieutenant Colonel Le Van Dinh (Criminal Police Department, Ministry of Public Security). Photo: Thanh Hung

According to Mr. Dinh, there are currently a number of new fraud methods such as impersonating organizations to make phone calls and send fraudulent messages in all fields. Some subjects also forge documents from the Ministry of Education and Training, universities announcing enrollment, studying abroad, requesting money transfers to prove financial status... Or impersonating the Ministry of Health to commit fraud, impersonating doctors at hospitals to inform victims that their relatives are in emergency and need to transfer money urgently for surgery...

The discussion also pointed out that Vietnam is seriously lacking in cyber security human resources while threats are increasingly diverse and cross-border.

Lieutenant General Nguyen Xuan Yem, Director of the Institute of Non-Traditional Security, School of Business Administration - Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
Photo: Thanh Hung

Lieutenant General Nguyen Xuan Yem, Director of the Institute of Non-Traditional Security, School of Business Administration - Hanoi National University, said that the major challenge now is that the shift in training of cybersecurity human resources has mostly not kept up with the rapid pace of change in the actual situation. In addition, the number of cybersecurity experts in Vietnam is not really large.

Experts called for building a long-term training strategy, investing in cybersecurity laboratories and strengthening cooperation between police forces, the military, universities and technology businesses to effectively respond to increasingly complex risks in the digital space.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/toi-pham-loi-dung-ca-chinh-sach-mien-giam-hoc-phi-de-lua-tien-phu-huynh-2446225.html