Safeguarding ourselves from tech scamsters

Cyber Crime has become a raging topic of interest, attracting attention from most of us. Despite the profound focus of administrative bodies and enforcement agencies to spread awareness, we still find an increasing trend, with more than 8000 incidents occurring daily across the country, causing an estimated loss of 1.5 lakh rupees a minute. Cybercrime in India is expected to attain a figure of around ₹20,000 crore in 2025, with financial online frauds contributing almost 85%. While the definition of Cybercrime spans across a plethora of entities, we are focusing here specifically on crimes committed against individuals.

The ease of technology and digital revolution has facilitated traditional scamsters to adopt tech savvy modes of operation, leading to the replacement of knife with a mouse. This is aided by people adopting widespread usage of digital transactions and popularity of social media. In order to control this menace, we need to understand the modus-operandi of these criminals and the reasons that make us a victim of such frauds.

Some of the widespread scams are:

• Mirror Website: Scamsters create a fake website looking similar to the genuine website of a Bank or reputed institution. A victim shares his information (at times including login credentials), which is harvested by the scamsters and misused.
• UPI/ QR Code Fraud: A user is asked to scan a QR code for any reason, which triggers off a payment from his Bank account.
• Smishing: Fraudulent text messages to deceive recipients into clicking malicious links. The messages impersonate trusted organizations in an effort to steal personal details.
• Fake Customer Care Numbers/ Social Media handles: Victims presume they are interacting with genuine representatives of a Bank/ company. They are instigated to share information (login credentials, OTPs etc.) or asked to download malicious apps.
• Job Offers: Lucrative remuneration for full-time/part-time work to be delivered usually in an online mode.
• Stock Advisories: The conmen make the victim invest in stocks with promises of abnormally high returns through malicious apps.
• Loan Apps: Offering unsecured credit, users are lured to download virulent apps or share information, and later blackmailed since the scamsters have access to their entire phone data.
• Sextortion: Gaining user's information or engaging in video chats through various apps and subsequently blackmailing the victim with morphed pictures/ videos.
• Digital Arrest: The most talked about recent scam, where a person is confined on a video chat with fake police/ enforcement agencies and pressurised to share financial details or transfer money.

Besides these, one can list a multitude of deceptions like Threats of Phone/ Power disconnection, Fake Traffic challans, Toll-Fastag expiry, Parcel delivery, Fake KYC, Relative in Hospital/ police custody or messages for urgent fund requirement by a friend.

A scrutiny of all these scams depicts a common trend. The criminals exploit human feelings to lead a victim into a trap. Human nature makes us vulnerable to greed, lust, fear, anxiety. The tricksters manipulate any of these emotions, accompanied with a sense of urgency. The racket is well organised, and victims are targeted on the basis of their profiles. Senior Citizens and early youth are the most targeted groups. Senior citizens get conned due to lack of awareness and can be easily convinced to click on a fake link. Moreover, they are generally on the lookout for opportunities to mitigate their financial insecurity. On the other hand, youth (especially 25-35 age group) get targeted due to their craving for quick money and get-rich schemes. In either case, the fraudsters try to create fictitious scenarios and brainwash a victim into capitulation.

Although the root cause of cybercrime is digitisation, the same is essential for survival today. The affliction can rather be attributed to digital complacency and lack of mass awareness. There is a noticeable gap in the growth of digital adoption vis-a-vis cybersecurity and awareness. With an ever-increasing digital footprint, we need to safeguard ourselves from becoming an easy prey. Here are some of the precautions that we can take to avoid falling into the trap of cyber scammers :

• Do not share OTPs, Passwords with anyone.
• Change the passwords of your key accounts periodically.
• Do not share your Personal, Financial and Identity related information with any unknown person.
• Do not click any links or download any application unless you are sure that it has come from an authentic source.
• Double-check the URL before accessing a Bank's website, to ensure the genuineness of the site.
• Before accessing, recheck any URL that does not end with standard top-level domains like com, org, net, gov, in, edu etc.
• Do not share critical information on phone unless you are absolutely sure that the person on the other end is authorised representative of the organsation you are presumably speaking with.
• Obtain contact details/ Customer care numbers from authorised websites of a particular organisation. Abstain from acquiring contact details through search engines.
• Implement two factor authentication wherever possible, as TFA includes an additional layer of security for access.
• Your Social Media profiles should be displayed appropriately, covering any vital information. Make full use of the privacy settings of your SM accounts to ensure that your personal information is not publicly visible.
• Do not accept Friend requests from Unknown people on your social media.
• Do not use Public/ Free Wi-Fi for any financial transactions.
• Do not use any device other than your personal device for such transactions.
• Do not install any Browser extensions, unless specifically required.
• Be vigilant - any unknown call could be a Cyber Fraud.

If you have succumbed to a digital fraud, do not hide it. Report immediately at Cybercrime Portal (www.cybercrime.gov.in). Share it with all your contacts, since there is a possibility that your contact details have been compromised and they could be future victims. The crux is to be wary of anything that seems too good to be true. Remember the universal law that everything comes at a cost, and there is no free lunch.

The author is a technocrat with expertise in Data Analytics, Cyber Law and Digital Forensics. He is currently acting as consulting advisor/ mentor to several startups.