Photo: CFP

The Shanghai anti-telecom network fraud center has warned residents to be highly alert of FaceTime invitations from strangers as they have received several recent reports related to FaceTime scams. 

The scammers pretended to provide customer service from financial platforms, and informing their targets to immediately close their loan liabilities at the risk of impacting their individual credit as a premise for gaining the target's trust. 

A Shanghai resident surnamed Zhou received a FaceTime invitation from a stranger who claimed that he was from JD.com's customer service team. The "employee" told Zhou that Zhou's JD account related to her financial credit has some problems and asked Zhou to close it. Zhou followed the instructions to close the account and downloaded an app, before finally transferred 20,000 yuan ($2,764.42) to a designated account, according to Shanghai police. 

In a Shanghai residential compound, a resident also confirmed with the Global Times that they have received warnings from the residential committee to be alert of strange FaceTime invitations as at least two cases were reported in the area.

The scammers create psychological panic in their victims, claiming a problem existed with the victims' financial account and guide the victims to download online-meeting programs, opening un-known websites to trick the victim into transferring money to a designated account. Once the money has been transferred, the scammers blacklist the victims' account and disappear, according to Shanghai police.  

The police reminded residents not to disclose information related to their identity, financial accounts and passwords. The police also said that there's no need to panic over information related to personal credit. Personal credit is managed by the People's Bank of China, and no one has the right to delete or modify this data.