Today almost every one is using a smartphone and it is through this android smartphone we can do transactions online, avail banking facilities, purchase goods and services online, watch movies, videos, play online games, download games etc. We have Digital wallets as in our smartphones for easy access to digital documents and other payment system. Digital revolution in India has totally changed the landscape of way of doing businesses and e-commerce sector. However, subsequently this digital revolution has opened doors for dark side that is fraudulent calls, scam calls and other phising activities that mainly target the victims bank accounts and drain their years hard earned money. The cyber criminals and hackers are exploiting the technology and deceive the victims by gaining access to their bank accounts and immediately emptying their saved money. This is total exploitation and harassment to innocent citizens done by these cyber criminals.
India at present is facing the disturbing menace of fraudulent calls that are cheating and deceiving the innocent citizens and emptying their hard earned money by unfair means. It is very disturbing phenomenon and is a matter of utmost concern. This concern is affecting and luring many of us in one way or the other. These scammers are posing themselves as bank representatives, telecom officials, or call centres executives and they try to steal information from us like aadhar numbers, most importantly OTPs. They are so expert in this field and have the art tricking and befooling the gullible citizens of our country. These scam calls are not random calls but a well organized system They pretend themselves as genuine personnels of Banks, Post Offices, Telecom or customer care agents and sometimes it has been witnessed that they managed to reveal OTPs details from citizens. Once they get the OTPs number, they will gain access to the bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards or any digital wallets and in this way the citizens will loose their life time saved money.
The scammers/fraudsters often call the victim by saying that their bank account details needs some modifications or updation in the form of KYC verification and these scammers ask victims to share their aadhar card, PAN Card or OTP with them. The scammers generally called victims and said them that their bank account or sim card will be blocked if they won't provide aadhar number or OTP. Once they get OTP, the victims bank account can be hacked and all his/her hard earned money will be drained out and this leads to huge financial loses. These cyber criminals work for some fake unregistered agencies and their motive is to loot the public by amassing huge amount of money from their bank accounts. Sometimes these fraudsters use spoofed numbers that generally resembles with the official helpline number of customer care, banks, telecom agencies etc.
There is surge in the OTPs scams in India because we are witnessing that everything is going online. We are living in a digital world and all of us rely on online banking services. This shift towards digital adoption and digital services have created ample opportunities for these scammers to hoodwink and deceive the innocent citizens of our country. Some citizens are unaware of such kinds of frauds and have no knowledge of cyber frauds. This lack of awareness has made the work of cyber criminals easy. We should be aware of this fact that the banks never ask for OTPs or aadhar numbers. So we need to remain vigilant in future. There is time to time advisories issues by the RBI and other law enforcement agencies but these cyber criminals are so expert as they find loopholes in the system and deceive the innocent citizens. Moreover, these scammers and cyber criminals are expert in social engineering skills and make their calls motivating and convincing so that cyber frauds can be done easily by looting public money.
Families can lose years of savings in a matter of minutes. In addition to losing money, retrieving their loss is a challenge where many banks will refuse compensation to claimants on the basis that the victims voluntarily provided their OTP, and therefore they were negligent. Banks and managers that supervise banks have run awareness campaigns advising customers that no person should be provided an OTP, CVV or PIN, banks have begun social awareness as an effort to reduce fraudulent activity. Some banks are even warning their customers about OTP scams by sending regular reminders. The Indian Reserve Bank (RBI) has produced guidance in respect to two-factor authentication. The RBI requires financial transactions to entail two-factor authentication. Cybercrime cells are investigating many cases, however, there is so much material to investigate that investigating and documenting overcharges is quite difficult.
(Writer: Vivek Koul)
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