Kyle Chua
Nov 20, 20212 min
There’s a new scam that you should be wary of, where callers posing as Lazada employees will ask for a one-time pin (OTP) to access your account and reset your password. We'll keep it short and sweet: NEVER give out your password, personal information or any OTP received to anybody, as Lazada will never ask for this information.
Facebook user Stanley Fu in a post wrote about his experience in which he almost became a victim.
Mr Fu said that he first received a call from someone who claimed to be from Lazada, informing him about a suspicious transaction pinged in the United Kingdom. The caller then said that the transaction has already been blocked and that, for security reasons, he needed to reset Mr Fu’s account. This required Mr Fu to give the caller his one-time pin.
Having a gut feeling that it was a scam, Mr Fu tried to verify if the caller was truly a Lazada employee. To his surprise, the caller managed to give him his email account, contact number and even his home address. Mr Fu noted how the caller was like a trained customer service representative and knew not to read out his full details.
After this exchange, the caller told Mr Fu that he would send him an email containing an OTP to verify that he was the real Stanley Fu. The email he sent was indeed from Lazada. At that moment, Mr Fu said that it made sense to give him the OTP.
Yet he still had a gut feeling that the person on the other end of the line couldn’t be trusted. So Mr Fu probed further, asking the caller to verify more information. This irritated the caller, which blew his cover.
Mr Fu hung up the call and immediately contacted Lazada. The e-commerce platform confirmed his gut feeling of it being a scam.
He warns others to also be vigilant when talking to these so-called Lazada agents. However, he still doesn’t know how they have gotten his information. What he seems certain of is that the caller’s goal was to get his OTP, change his password and use his account for transactions.
Mr Fu’s experience doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident, with other Facebook users saying that they have also received similar calls.
Lazada warned users of various online scams, reminding users never to give their OTP away to anyone. The company also suggested installing the ScamShield mobile app to help mitigate the risks of being victimised by a scam.
“Lazada and its delivery providers will never ask for your credit card details, OTP/SMS Verification Code or passwords,” wrote Lazada in a Facebook post. “Contact Lazda Care if in doubt.”