In recent months, there have been many reports of Malaysians falling victim to online scams through fake home-cleaning services.
These scams target consumers who search for such services but end up having their bank accounts hacked instead. Victims have lost up to RM20,000, and losses can happen within minutes.
Here’s how some of these scams work. They usually start off with an ad on a popular social media platform such as Facebook, and these posts usually look similar to those shared by trusted brands.
To attract the customer, extremely low prices are offered for first-time users.
In Recommend.my’s investigation, over seven different ads for various cleaning companies were identified, all of which used the similar price of RM30 for four hours of cleaning work – an irresistible offer indeed!
Seemingly, a new scam Facebook page and its related ads are created once every two to three days. But they also get shut down pretty quickly, within a couple of weeks, which is plenty of time for damage to be done to unsuspecting victims.
All these ads on Facebook will ask you to click a button to launch a Whatsapp chat. A “sales representative” will explain more about the RM30 deal and how to book the service, which is usually done by installing their mobile…
