A SHENZHEN resident lost over 50,000 yuan (US$7,264) after his smartphone was “locked” for no reason last month, according to a Zaker report.

    The resident, surnamed He, said that his phone had been “locked” on the night of Feb. 3 for no reason and all of his attempts to unlock it failed. When he checked his smartphone the next day, he was surprised to find that all of the data on his phone had been erased and someone had used his account to pay 13 online shopping bills for a laptop, a smartphone, a mouse and other products that cost him over 20,000 yuan.

    He called the shopping website’s customer service hotline and canceled the orders. But then he found that someone had also borrowed 32,000 yuan from the website and 26,000 yuan from a Shenzhen-based finance company on his behalf, and the money being transferred to his bank account by lenders was later transferred away by someone.

    According to Shenzhen police, the suspects must have obtained He’s name, ID number, bank card number and phone number by illegal means and cracked the password of his phone’s cloud service account to make his phone number an auxiliary number of their phone number.

    After the suspects activated the “data erase” function on his phone’s cloud service account, He’s phone was powered off automatically. Then all of the verification codes supposed to be sent to his phone were sent to the suspects’ phone, which allowed them to use his accounts to buy things or borrow money online.

    Three suspects, including a Singapore national, were detained by police. According to the police, the Singaporean bought people’s e-bank accounts and other personal information from illegal sources and hired two other suspects as technicians by offering them drugs.

    The police also seized drugs, laptops, cell phones and over 20 bank cards from the suspects’ haunts.

    Residents are advised to complicate their passwords with at least 15 digits and check with telecom operators as soon as possible if their mobile phones are locked or restored to factory settings for no reason.

    (Zhang yang)