Rising incidents of Cyber Crime

There have been incidents of people being defrauded over promises of winning a lottery or availing services of friendship or dating. A common factor which was present in the victims were that they are all educated, yet the blindly believe the cyber fraudsters who get in touch with them over social media and internet dating sites. Fraudsters have been duping people in the name of lottery and claiming transfer charges to win the lottery.

Modus operandi

Online fraudsters manage to collect a large amount of information about their potential victims. For example, data like phone numbers and e-mail addresses can be collected by asking someone to fill in a form for winning a lottery prize at a mall or a petrol pump. This data is then sold to cyber criminals who contact people via phone calls, SMSs or emails about online schemes.

Those who get lured by the promise of making quick money are cheated. Fraudsters ask their targets to transfer money into different bank accounts on charges of service fees for availing data services. After the money is withdrawn, fraudsters without it immediately while a part of the money is given to the beneficiary account holder.

Preventive steps

For banks, it is essential to conduct stringent verification of KYC documents. For individuals it is essential to be cautious while sharing personal information and avoid submitting bank account details, ATM card number with an unknown person.
Suspicious online offers and messages should be ignored and the person may report to the police in case of the any fraudulent scheme offer.

Topics: GS-III: Cyber Security in India