KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians have been urged to avoid using house cleaning or food delivery services that require customers to download a third party application under the Android Package Kit (APK).
Deputy Finance Minister II Yamani Hafez Musa (Perikatan Nasional-Sipitang) said the APK application would allow scammers to read victims' SMS carrying the one-time password (OTP), which is commonly used to facilitate financial transactions.
"The issue of losing money in accounts without the knowledge or permission of the customers is mainly caused by methods employed by financial fraud syndicates to induce customers to hand over their banking information either knowingly or unknowingly.
"For example, house cleaning or food delivery service offers where the financial fraud syndicate instructs the victim to download an APK application file that can read the SMS without the victim's knowledge, along with a fake payment or money transfer screen.
"At times, these syndicates also disguised themselves as authorities or banks to extract banking information from the victims," he told the Dewan Rakyat today.
Yamani reminded the public to take practical approaches when dealing with the possibility of being scammed.
He cautioned the people against panicking when facing such a situation and to never follow the instructions of questionable callers.
This included not sharing any vital personal information with them, he added.
He also warned Malaysians against calling dubious numbers for any reason and to always be on guard when dealing with a person asking for personal financial information.
"Do not download the third party application using the APK file because the application can access the personal information on the victim's phone."
Yamani was responding to Steven Choong (Parti Bangsa Malaysia-Tebrau) who asked about the reasons certain bank depositors became the victims of scammers where their OTP was requested without permission.