At the end of September, a resident of Ho Chi Minh City named Anh Ngoc saw an advertisement on a social network for the CoinDrama app, which promised to pay for watching short videos. She installed it and immediately received 250,000 dong, about ten dollars, in her account. However, she could not withdraw the money: the minimum withdrawal amount was 500,000 dong. To reach that sum, the app offered her advertising clips to watch. At first, each view earned 50,000–100,000 dong, but over time the reward dropped to a thousand.
"I spent the whole afternoon of my day off watching ads, but I never managed to reach the 500,000-dong threshold," Anh Ngoc said. The app also insistently suggested installing third-party programs from unknown websites. In the end, the young woman gave up and deleted CoinDrama.
Another Vietnamese resident, Hong Hanh, encountered a similar scheme in the MixReels app. While completing tasks, she installed several programs from unknown websites, including a document reader that requested broad access permissions on the device. After that, she said, her smartphone began showing advertisements every 10 seconds, even without an internet connection. The pop-up windows covered the screen and prevented her from resetting the phone to factory settings. She had to take the device to a repair shop, where the operating system was reinstalled. As a result, she lost personal files stored on the phone and paid for the repair.
Apps of this kind for earning money from videos have become popular in Vietnam. CoinDrama has more than 10 million downloads on Google Play, and CashDrama more than 5 million. The scheme is the same in each case: the user is credited a welcome bonus, but in order to withdraw money, they are made to watch ads and install other apps. The reward gradually shrinks, and eventually it becomes impossible to accumulate the minimum amount for withdrawal. Online, one can find many complaints from people who spent hours watching ads before realizing they had been deceived. Some, like Hong Hanh, had to reflash their phones because of malicious software.
This scheme is not confined to Vietnam. According to the Thai outlet Thai PBS, the Bangkok police have also warned residents about apps that promise money for watching videos. The authorities noted that in most cases it is impossible to withdraw the funds, or that a deposit is demanded for doing so.
Le Duy Thanh, a lecturer at the International University in Ho Chi Minh City, explains that such schemes play on people's desire to find easy additional income. "Many people reason like this: 'Trying it doesn't hurt, I'm not losing anything.' However, the numbers on the screen in the app are not real money," he says. Developers earn revenue from advertisers, but the rules of advertising networks such as Google AdMob expressly prohibit paying users for views or clicks. Virtual balances and fortune wheels serve only to hold attention.
Users think they are watching entertainment clips and getting paid a salary for it, but in fact they are simply generating ad revenue for dubious publishers. The balance on the screen is merely a psychological lure.
— Le Duy Thanh, founder of the AIoT Lab VN
Nguyen Duc Hoai, co-founder of the company Bizino AI, warns that, besides lost time, users risk their cybersecurity. Installing apps from unverified sources puts the device in serious danger. Depending on the permissions granted, malicious programs can steal passwords, intercept notifications and two-factor authentication codes. Security specialists advise never transferring money to "unlock" a winning balance and not trusting apps simply because they allowed a small amount to be withdrawn at the very beginning.
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