What’s the Truth? Bank Fraud

The year is 2021, the world has halfway been vaccinated, people are resuming normal work slowly. Even with the economic losses, the citizens of the world are standing again on their feet, crime on streets has been reduced but on the other side of the curtain, online scams have increased. Today, we see one of the online scams that has been happening on the rise.

The internet has been a daily necessity in our lives, earlier there used to be a saying, “Roti, Kapda aur Makaan”, meaning Bread, Clothes and House. Now though, a fourth pillar has been added to it, the internet. There used to be a time where the internet was used solely for limited purposes, but now, as the world moves ahead, the usage of the internet has increased as well. It has been both a boon as well as a curse. Nowadays, there has been a rise in digital criminal activities, where criminals can go to great lengths in operating a scam with complete anonymity. So how do the scams operate? Well, one of the solutions lies in a technology made by the CIA named as the dark net, a dark net is a network which is only accessible by special software or authorizations. When someone operates in a dark net, the identity of the person is hidden and therefore, untraceable and hence anything and everything the person does can be absolutely untraceable. One of the common online scams are bank fraud and extortion scams. With new payment options such as UPI and net banking on the rise, these types of frauds are on the rise. It starts with us as a general public, we save our card details, upi ids or net banking ids on websites we buy stuff from, some of which are not encrypted. In this way, scammers can get hold of your personal details and can eliminate thousands to millions and the general public remains unaware. Normally, scammers would make transactions on your account on a range of small denominations to avoid the submission of contact information to the bank. So, by the time the victim understands the vast scale of the deteriorated situation, it is too late.

Another type of bank fraud happens via the most common thing, a cell phone. Imagine a situation,you are bored, you are sitting in your home, you are watching television, and you want to order some food, you know a local pizza place, you search the number online and call it. On the other end, a person picks it up, notes down your order and tells you the bill. You ought to pay by your debit card, you give them the number, they ask for the CVV, you give them that as well, they then tell you that you would have an OTP number arriving and you have to tell them, without prior thinking, you give them that and the caller says that your pizza would be at your place in less than 30 minutes. You are excited for the food, wait and wait, and see as the time goes by, but no pizza ever comes home, you call the number, only to find out that it does not exist anymore. After some more waiting, you get frustrated and you get a text message on your phone which reads that you have been debited more than Fifty Thousand Rupees from your account. You are now shell shocked and the next day you go to the ATM and take a receipt and you actually notice, you are missing more than what you read last night. You are paralyzed in fear, you head on to the bank, and in the traveling times, you see more and more of your money getting debited. You reach your bank and immediately what you should do is block your card. By the time your card has been blocked, you have lost much of your savings.

So What Can We Do To Prevent These Types of Frauds?

The first and most important thing is to bring awareness in your life. The one thing you have to remember is that banks would never call you demanding the OTP for your phone or call you at odd times. Never trust any phone number you find on the internet, there could be a big chance that they are frauds. There are tons of applications available from which you can find out if the phone number is genuine or not. Avoid paying by any vulnerable form of payment at unknown getaways, we tend to save our cards on e-commerce websites, until and unless, it is very encrypted, avoid saving your payment information. Whenever you get calls regarding the CVV or the OTP, never give it out to them. If you ever get any email or any text message or any call that sounds surprisingly awesome such as lotteries or jackpot, do not reply, and do not even click the links provided. If in a situation, you have ever experienced cyber fraud, do not panic and immediately contact the Cyber Cell. They will help you out immediately. Always remember, you can prevent crimes by being aware. So wake yourself up, learn about these, there is a ton of information available. Do the right thing.

Fin

---