Wednesday, June 7, 2017

In order to confuse the authorities fraudsters use mobile wallets to transfer the stolen money instead of directly transferring it

The inter-connectivity of social media and E-wallets for banking on mobile has become the perfect hunting ground for cyber crime. In the cashless society, the fraudsters are coming up with several new modus operandi/tricks to dupe victims and to be untraceable. The recent one is phishing callers using E-wallets to siphon money, The Mumbai police have received several complaints recently wherein the victim gets a call from the fraudsters and after hacking into E-wallet money, siphons the money.

In one of such complaint registered in the Sahar Police Station, a 21-year-old youth lost Rs 20,000 from his bank account. This time the fraudster used E-wallet to siphon the money as the wallet was linked with the bank hence the fraudster hacked the E-wallet.

The investigators say the modus operandi of fraudsters has changed a bit as they use mobile wallets to transfer the stolen money instead of directly transferring it as it helps them confuse the authorities and be untraceable.

Meanwhile, in another case registered in BKC police station, a 25-year-old was duped for Rs 40,000 by such a fraudster posing as a customer care executive, using her mobile wallet. The accused had hacked her wallet and siphoned money from it. "The fraudster used the e-wallet to mislead us as he transferred the money to different mobile wallets. During the course of the probe that has been initiated, we found that the money was transferred to different e-wallets registered through phone numbers that were procured using fake IDs. Once the money got deposited to the e-wallets, they were further transferred to different bank accounts. The source of these accounts were traced to Patna, in Bihar," said an investigating officer of the case from BKC police station.

Shubham Singh, Cyber expert says, "For fraudsters, using digital wallets is an easier option because the bank account number obtained gets added to the wallet and the OTP gets generated instantly. Once the OTP is shared, the money gets transferred, and the trail ends."
Don't give hackers access to your phone:

The cyber police officer attached with Bandra Kurla Complex cyber police station says, the more we are being digitised, the more ways cybercriminals are finding to siphon the money.

Explaining another modus operandi the police officer says, the victims are lured into the cyber scam through links circulated on WhatsApp. Unassuming users are then led to a fake website which infects their phones with malware and trojans, allowing the scammer to remotely hack the phone and acquires net banking and e-wallets access too. Hundreds of complaints have been lodged in BKC cyber police stations.
Verify your account details:

In these cases victims get an email supposedly from their bank, or say a payment gateway, asking them to 'verify the details of their account' or something like 'Act now, or your account will be deactivated' or something as serious as 'your account has been breached'. The email contains a link; clicking on which takes them to the page of their bank or payment gateway and they are quite easily fooled as the page looks deceptively similar to the original one. On reaching there, a victim is asked to fill in details related to their account, including the account number, password and other sensitive personal information like birthday, address etc. When the miscreants get hold of the account details, they will be armed to siphon with the money.
Credit/debit card frauds:

Though the Mumbai police and banks have repeatedly warned the citizens to not to share their sensitive banking information to anyone the statistics show that the instances of card fraud are increasing.

According to the comparative statistics first four months of 2016 and 17 show, the card fraud is still rising. In first four months of 2016, as many as 171 cases were registered with Mumbai police while in 2017 it is 197 surpassing last year's cases.

Experts say, in these cases, precautions are better than cure as the fraudsters would not be able to do anything unless you share the credentials with them. However elite class has been more cautious about such fraudster callers, the middle class and the lower class have been now targeted by the fraudsters. The callers nowadays have started abusing and threatening the victims when they don't fall prey for such scams.
The detection rate of Cybercrime alarming;

As DNA had reported earlier the number of cases solved by the cyber cell have remained consistently low for the last four years, with only 20 percent success rate.

Eighty per cent of the cases registered in the year 2016 remains undetected, according to the statistics shared by the cyber cell.

On asking about tracking the cyber frauds the senior police officer said,"People should be more aware of the cyber security, we try our best to spread awareness through social media and detect the cyber cases but it has become challenging for us as most of the criminals use foreign servers to remain undetected. We have been continuously working to crack down online frauds and are closing down websites that have been suspicious in nature, but as we close one the other opens up with another name and server," said a senior officer from the cyber police station.

The officer also added that "There is a need to upgrade skilled manpower and technology to help detect cases more swiftly,"
Experts advise box

Cyber expert Vijay Mukhi says "Cyber crime is rising by an order of magnitude. Going cashless is a great idea but we need a cyber deterrence which India does not have. We have allowed hackers to steal our money without the fear of a jail term.The rate of hacking will grow exponentially over time as hackers all over the world will start stealing our money. The users should be more cautious while using e-wallets and net banking,"

Shubham Singh Cyber Expert said, "One should never put their credentials of E-wallets on any gateways or on another platform. Should always use official websites to download any app related banking services and avoid using the third-party application for downloading."

"There are several cases of fraud registered, one should never share their credentials with anyone and be pre cautious while using e-wallets and net banking," said Akbar Pathan, Deputy Commissioner of police(cyber).
Dos

Use official websites for downloading banking app.

Use pass lockers for Whatsapp and other messengers to avoid it being hacked.

On coming across any suspicious activity, alert the bank and police.
Don'ts

Do not share your credit/debit card number, PIN and OTP with anyone.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Search here anything you like