Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung on Tuesday warned the public to be on their guard against scams where would-be fraudsters impersonate people's neighbours and try to steal their personal information.

Chung said her office has received several reports of such attempted scams in recent weeks.

The perpetrators have pretended to be a neighbour and first contact people by SMS claiming to want to discuss water leaks or noise in their building.

They later switch the conversation to instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and send a link purported to be of a plumber, for example, but actually get people to click on websites where they could have sensitive information – and eventually their money – stolen.

"Because the scams have happened at housing estates in many districts, we believe the scammers contacted their targets by taking a scattergun approach and not because there had been a data breach at a particular housing estate which would have provided the fraudsters with residents' phone numbers," the commissioner said on an RTHK programme.

"We also haven't received any data breach notifications from any estates. So we believe the fraudsters got the phone numbers via social media platforms or from previous data breach incidents involving other organisations."

Chung urged the public to be cautious if they receive an SMS from someone claiming to be a neighbour.

Sha Tin district councillor Law Yi-lam told the same programme that she has received 20 reports of such scams this month, but none of those contacting her had actually lost money.