Fraud or hoax calls have begun to seize a column in the newspaper these days, it has become a common practice to deceive people and get easy access to their personal information. In a span of 2018-2019, several cases adhering to this have been reported. Still, least change has been observed; such treacheries continue to occur, risking innocent people’s lives.
When in doubt or troubled with a problem, possibilities of dialing customer care numbers increases. And no better search engine can solve this other than Google. As soon as these tricksters get the first piece of our personal data, half of the job is already done, and the remaining part is completed in the blink of an eye. Before we realize it’s already too late, their actual motives had already been achieved during that course of one phone call!
Recently, a fake Zomato call center misled a woman and cleared her entire bank account. She had called in order to seek a refund, and as a result,
found a customer care number on Google which caused her to register her grievances with this number.Within few minutes, she perceived her bank account to be wiped out, leaving her with nothing but utter shock. Reports say that the woman lost Rs. 17,286 from her savings account.
Another incident that focuses on the same, took place a week back. A customer from Chennai was tricked through a fake customer care call that demanded his unified payments interface (UPI) pin, passwords and bank details to generate a refund. However, he turned to be smart enough to gauge it as a fraud call and immediately produced a wrong pin. As an outcome of which, he received two messages from his bank that stated transactions for amount of Rs.5000 and Rs. 10 had been denied due to incorrect pin.
An EPFO Provident Fund incurred similar losses. A scamster altered the contact details of an EPFO office in Mumbai on Google. And as and when people contacted on that number, they were misguided in several ways, gaining an access to restricted information.
Such repeated events ushered Zomato to take action. Hence it filed a complaint on July 25 with the cyber police, asking them to carry out an early investigation.
Besides, one of the most desired dairy brands Amul issued a legal notice to Google, claiming that a series of pseudo B2B campaigns regarding Amul Parlours and Distributors have started through fake websites using Google search ads since September 2018.
Several cases like these have been occurring for the past few months. Extracting details like OTP, credit/debit card facts, have known to become serious criminalized offences, thus not only violating a person’s right to privacy but also reflecting the high number of cyber crimes being reported each year.
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