Police said in an alert posted on their CyberDefender Facebook page on Monday night that they received the cases over a week earlier this month.
“The biggest loss in one case amounted to HK$30,000, with a combined loss of nearly HK$200,000,” police said.
Scammers posed as the users after hacking the accounts to dupe people on contact lists
“Pretending to be the account owners, the hackers sent Instagram messages to the users’ relatives and friends to ask for urgent financial help,” the force warned.
Police said the victims’ relatives and friends discovered they had been deceived after they transferred money to fraudsters-controlled designated bank accounts.
According to authorities, online account hijacking can occur due to various reasons, such as forgetting to log out from a public computer or falling victim to malicious software.
“Whenever you use any social media platform and receive messages from relatives and friends requesting money transfers or payments, you should immediately call them to verify their identity and the legitimacy of the request,” police told the public.
In case an Instagram account is hacked or hijacked, the force advised that users should try to log in to their accounts as soon as possible and change passwords promptly.
Police also urged messaging account holders to enable two-factor authentication and safeguard their account details.
Swindlers typically send phishing text messages with links to fake websites and employ different excuses to trick WhatsApp users into revealing their account verification codes.
Scammers used the information to access accounts and posed as the users to dupe people on the real owner’s contacts list.
The force’s cybersecurity and technology crime bureau recorded 864 cases between January and March where users had their messaging accounts hijacked, resulting in losses of HK$20.4 million. More than 90 per cent of the cases involved WhatsApp accounts.
Police figures showed a significant rise in the theft of online accounts, with 3,434 reports last year compared with the 168 cases logged in 2022. Most of the cases involved WhatsApp accounts.
Financial losses increased to HK$87.6 million in 2023 from HK$73.8 million the year before – a HK$13.8 million jump.