Vietnam: Confronting the Surge in Online Scams
With over 70 million internet users, two-thirds of its population, Vietnam’s rapid digital growth has fueled e-commerce, digital finance, and social networking. Yet between 2022 and 2024, while the online population grew by 14%, reported scam cases surged by 70%.
Fraud spans brand impersonation to AI-driven deepfakes, with more than three-quarters of cases tied to financial schemes such as fake investments and cryptocurrency scams. In 2023, Southeast Asia recorded USD 37 billion in scam-related losses, with regional networks linked to USD 3.5 billion in damages in the United States.
Vietnam has responded by blocking over 2,600 scam websites, introducing biometric banking authentication, and partnering with platforms like Google and Facebook, cutting fraudulent transactions by 50% in a single month. However, more than 54% of victims still do not report incidents, and vulnerable groups such as the elderly, students, and rural residents remain difficult to protect.
Why Vietnam Needed a Different Model
In recent years, Vietnam has gradually built a more comprehensive legal foundation to protect its citizens in cyberspace. The Cybersecurity Law (2018) laid the groundwork for managing and addressing online violations, while the Personal Data Protection Law (2025, effective 2026) enshrined privacy as a citizen’s right for the first time. Together, these laws signal a clear message: digital safety is a national priority. Macro-level strategies such as Decision 411/QĐ-TTg (2022) on the digital economy and digital society, and Resolution 57-NQ/TW (2024) on digital transformation, have further placed security and digital trust at the centre. Complementing these efforts, nationwide awareness campaigns have been rolled out to equip citizens with basic defensive skills. These steps reflect the state’s growing commitment to building a safer digital environment, not merely as a regulatory goal but as a prerequisite for the sustainable development of people, businesses, and society in the digital era.
However, traditional anti-scam measures remain reactive and fragmented, relying heavily on victim reports and post-incident enforcement. Yet 66% of victims do not report scams to authorities, leaving many cases unresolved. While scams are on the rise, digital literacy and preventive skills remain insufficient. Even among businesses, only 11% are considered adequately prepared to handle cybersecurity incidents. Scam networks, by contrast, evolve at dizzying speed: two-thirds of cases occur within a single day of first contact, spreading seamlessly across platforms and borders. Fragmented legal and institutional frameworks leave response systems struggling to keep pace. This asymmetry heightens systemic risk and underscores the urgent need for a whole-of-society approach.
In this context, Vietnam requires a model that can respond in real time to match the pace of scam operations; establish standardised data-sharing between government and private stakeholders to overcome fragmentation; and mobilise citizen participation to break the silence when most victims do not report. Such a model would not replace official law enforcement but complement it—bringing flexibility, speed, and wider reach, while strengthening society’s collective digital trust.
The Emergence of CLD’s Civic-Tech Approach
Founded in late 2020, Chong Lua Dao (CLD) began as a civic-tech initiative to enhance digital safety, focusing on empowering users through community-driven detection, real-time tools, and open data collaboration. The strength of this model lies in active civic participation—a critical factor in bridging gaps within the anti-scam landscape in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia. Through a multi-stakeholder network spanning government, the private sector, and civil society, CLD has gradually built sustainability and scaled its impact, while developing a comprehensive ecosystem:
- CLD Browser Extension: Warns users before they access phishing or scam websites. To date, it has blocked over 200,000 threats and serves around 45,000 monthly active users.
- AI Chatbot (available on Telegram and the web): Provides instant checks for suspicious links, images, and messages. It has completed over 200,000 verifications, with a reported 97% satisfaction rate.
- Threat Lookup Portal: Offers public access to a continuously updated scam database, handling over 7 million queries from approximately 270,000 monthly users.
- Threat Intelligence API: Supplies real-time scam data to banks, internet service providers, and social platforms, supporting over 1 million API calls daily across more than 15 partners.
- Crowdsourced Reporting System: Processes between 500 and 1,000 reports per day using AI analysis and human verification to support timely and accurate responses.
At the regional level, CLD has contributed data and analysis to reputable reports such as the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) Vietnam Scam Report 2023 and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Inflection Point 2025 and TOC Convergence Report. These contributions provide practical insights from Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian region to the international community, helping shape regional responses. CLD’s international collaboration network includes professional organisations, cybersecurity forums, and law enforcement agencies worldwide. By sharing threat data and promoting common standards for cross-border scam prevention, CLD supports the creation of a safer digital environment across Southeast Asia.
Beyond the region, CLD’s influence extends globally—from partnerships with Meta and Twitter to address scam content on social media, to engagement with expert networks such as the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and GASA. These efforts have enabled CLD’s initiatives and tools to reach an estimated 200 million users worldwide, demonstrating how a Vietnam-originated initiative can scale and make a meaningful contribution to global digital safety.
By mid-2025, CLD had assisted more than 26,000 scam victims, facilitated over 10 million safety checks, and engaged over 1 million people through public awareness initiatives. Its efforts have been recognised by Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications as one of the country’s Top 10 Community Tech Initiatives.
Strategic Recommendations for ASEAN Policymakers
Alongside recent Southeast Asian regional frameworks and initiatives—such as the ASEAN Cybersecurity Cooperation Strategy 2021–2025, which focuses on enhancing cooperation and cybersecurity capacity, and the ASEAN–China Joint Statement on Combating Telecommunications and Online Gambling Fraud, which emphasises cross-border collaboration—Vietnam’s experience in building multi-stakeholder alliances and developing digital safety tools offers valuable lessons for the region:
- Establish national multi-stakeholder anti-scam alliances that bring together government agencies, civil society, grassroots tech initiatives, and private platforms to strengthen domestic response and build public trust.
- Develop an ASEAN-wide scam threat-sharing mechanism with standardised reporting formats and verified threat feeds to enable faster detection and disruption of transnational scam networks.
- Invest in scalable, user-facing safety tools, such as scam-check chatbots, SMS alert systems, and real-time reporting platforms, with particular attention to high-risk and underserved communities.
By adopting approaches that emphasise speed, citizen participation, and cross-sector collaboration, ASEAN countries can better protect their digital economies from increasingly sophisticated, borderless threats. Vietnam’s civic-tech model demonstrates how empowering the public as active participants in digital safety can shift the fight against online scams from reactive response to proactive resilience. For countries facing resource constraints or challenges in reaching remote populations, civic participation provides a scalable solution—one that governments and ecosystem partners can amplify through institutional support, shared infrastructure, and cross-border collaboration.
Vietnam’s Lessons for ASEAN’s Digital Future
Vietnam’s experience highlights the potential of community-driven, technology-enabled solutions in the fight against online scams. By empowering citizens to participate actively in scam detection and prevention, Vietnam has developed an approach that not only improves response times but also fosters greater public trust in digital safety initiatives. As ASEAN countries confront the growing threat of transnational cybercrime, Vietnam’s model offers valuable insights into how grassroots innovation, combined with multi-sector collaboration, can help build a more secure and resilient digital landscape across the region.
About the Writer
Quynh Nguyen is the Chief of Research Officer at Chong Lua Dao (CLD), a Vietnamese grassroots initiative pioneering real-time, community-powered solutions to combat online scams.
About the Organisation
Founded in 2020, ChongLuaDao (CLD) is a social enterprise and cybersecurity initiative protecting Vietnamese users from online scams and cyber threats. CLD offers community-powered tools that combine machine learning and crowdsourced reports to help millions verify content, report harmful sites, and stay safe online. Unlike traditional vendors, CLD focuses on democratising digital security and empowering everyday users to protect one another.
The views and recommendations expressed in this article are solely of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views and position of the Tech for Good Institute.
