New trend of cybercrime: ‘Beware of phishing using Aadhaar-enabled Payment System’

Kolkata: Kolkata Police is making people aware of a new trend of cybercrime through its social media accounts so that people can prevent themselves from getting robbed by following a few steps.

According to police, recently, Kolkata Police received several complaints about money being deducted from the complainants’ bank accounts without sharing any information.

The victims of the crime told the cops that they neither received any call for sharing the information nor they clicked on any suspicious link.

Despite that, money got debited from their bank accounts. Every time the money got debited, the bank account holders received an SMS for each transaction where it has been mentioned that the money was withdrawn using the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS).

Police informed that mostly in rural areas where ATM counter is not available, a few local shopkeepers are given authorisation to provide money to people.

To withdraw money the bank account holder needs to provide his or her Aadhaar number and fingerprint for money withdrawal.

Cops suspect that in every case while the bank account holders provided fingerprints, those were scanned and preserved for fraudulent activities. Cops suggest people to lock their biometrics details through the ‘mAadhar’ application and unlock it only when needed.

It may be mentioned earlier several people were duped by fraudsters using false information about electricity connections. The fraudsters used to send text messages claiming that the electricity connection will be cut due to some issues with previous payments.

In the said message a mobile number is being given and the recipient is asked to contact immediately to avoid disconnection of the electricity line.

When people used to call, the accused persons either by getting OTP or by compelling the target to click on a link to dupe him or her.

Cyber experts have suggested not to fall for the trap as the fraudsters may convince any person who calls to take the message seriously.

Before taking any step, it is suggested to go through the message minutely as usually several grammatical mistakes can be found in such fake messages.