Watch out! You are on the cyber-fraud hit-list

Cybercrimes are a-plenty, but it will be our own fault if we are not vigilant and believe everything that surfaces on our social media platforms. There are many ways scamsters try to dupe us and do us out of our hard earned money, but it is up to us to not fall prey to them…

A bird was caught by a hunter and it said to the hunter, if you set me free, I will give you three pieces of advice. The first before you let me free, the second when I fly to the top of that tree and the third when I fly to the top of the mountain. The hunter agreed. The bird gave him the first piece of advice, “If you lose something no matter how much it means to you, let it go and do not be upset.” The hunter released the bird and the bird flew to the top of the tree and gave the second piece of advice: “If something does not make sense to you, and you don’t see it with your own eyes, don’t believe it.” And then the bird flew to the top of the mountain, looked down at the hunter and started laughing. It said, “Poor hunter, if you would have kept me and cut me open, you would have found a large jewel in my stomach and you would have been a rich man.”

The hunter got all upset and angry at his blunder. Finally, though, he calmed down and asked the bird, “Well now, give me the third advice.” The bird replied, “The third? If you don’t understand the first two, why should you have the third? I had told you if you lose something no matter how precious, let it go without worry, but you got all upset about losing the jewel. And then I had told you that if something does not make sense and you don’t see it with your own eyes, do not believe it. Does it make sense that a little bird like me would have a big jewel in its stomach? Until you understand the first two pieces of advice, you are destined to stay at the same level as most of humanity…”

The advice given to the hunter by a small bird is very meaningful in the present day world. We are facing many problems as we fall to hearsay, without verifying their truthfulness. We create problems for ourselves by relying on things that are not logical, or not seen with our own eyes. We do not even rely upon our common sense and depend upon some fake news or some ill motivated advice or rumour. To illustrate it, some present day problems are considered in the column.

We are facing many problems as we fall to hearsay, without verifying their truthfulness. We create problems for ourselves by relying on things that are not logical, or not seen with our own eyes. We do not even rely upon our common sense and depend upon some fake news or some ill motivated advice or rumour

Online scams galore

Cybercrimes causing financial loss are very common these days. These are happening the world over, and India is no exception. In fact, we with the highest population in the world and having some people with intelligent but criminal mindsets are virtually becoming the evil captains of these nefarious international games. Unsuspecting innocent people are being robbed for the mere fault of accepting advice from some stranger without verifying the facts. Online scams are happening every day. Intelligent people, even software engineers, are falling into this trap.

Modus operandi

The Hyderabad police had uncovered a few scam cases totally amounting to Rs 712 crores where thousands of people were involved. Many technologies based work-from-home assignments are on offer on social media platforms, and victims get tempted to accept them in order to make some additional income. Initially in some cases, the scamsters even send some small amounts of money as bait to the victims to win their confidence before attacking them fully. The victims in some cases have been sharing their bank details, while in some cases are seen to be parting their money as investments, to become partners with the operators without checking their credentials. The scamsters normally portray themselves as recruiting agents of big global technology firms. It appears that scamsters are generally well trained and well versed with the technical norms. There are some towns like Jamtara in Jharkhand and Mewat in Haryana, which have emerged as the nerve centres of cybercrimes.

The other set of crimes is soliciting business for alleged investment and financial companies. These companies are well advertised and celebrities are sometimes invited to share their platforms. The targets are the gullible investors who want to make more money than what banks or leading companies will pay. Their offer of interest is normally as high as 15% to 25% as against the highest bank interest of approximately 7% to 8%. To establish their credibility, they give apparently very logical pleas. Sometimes they say that the money collected go into trading plots of land or sometimes into multi-layer-marketing. Investment in films or in the stock market are some of their other pleas to make quick money. They claim that they have well experienced investment managers who operate the capital collected from investors. They falsely lure investors with profits to begin with and then these scamsters disappear when more capital is collected. Investigations in some cases have shown that these scamsters operate a host of shell bank accounts in Dubai whose proceeds go finally into crypto currencies.

The other normal trick played by the scamsters is to make people click on fraudulent links giving various pretexts. The links given by the scamsters expose the victim’s bank account details and then they are able to transfer such money into their specially created dubious bank accounts. They succeed because of our negligence and because of lack of proper verification from our side

Victims of extortion

The ultimate beneficiaries of money thus fraudulently collected have sometimes been Chinese entities. The Indian operators work as their incognito agents. It has also come to light that many people suffered not only financial loss but also mental and even sexual harassment when they were not vigilant in going to some loan apps, mainly of Chinese origin, which were seen as extorting people who had taken small loans from them for short durations. The modus-operandi was to inflate the interest rate repeatedly after the loan was taken, and even reducing the duration of the loan period agreed upon at the time of loan disbursement. The loan takers thus get bombarded with higher demands. Even after full repayment of principal amount along with the initially agreed interest rate, the borrower is coerced to pay more in view of the repeated increase of interest rates. This simply amounts to extortion. If they do not abide by the demands, they are subjected to mental and physical harassment. With female borrowers the threat sometimes leads to sexual harassment. Personal details like PAN, Aadhar card and bank accounts are also sometimes misused.

Click to doom

The other normal trick played by the scamsters is to make people click on fraudulent links giving various pretexts. The links given by the scamsters expose the victim’s bank account details and then they are able to transfer such money into their specially created dubious bank accounts. They succeed because of our negligence and because of lack of proper verification from our side. For example, in some cases the scamsters portray that the message sent has come from the income-tax portal, and that a refund has accrued, and for that purpose, the link given by them has to be clicked. Some scamsters trick by attracting the victims with time tested honey-traps. WhatsApp messages are sent with attractive display profiles of female faces to attract the victims to chats, and then the process of cheating, black-mailing and robbing start.

The story of the bird and hunter and the advice given should be kept in mind. We have to remain vigilant and awake. We should not believe things till we have verified a proposal or seen it with our own eyes. We should never abandon our common sense and logical reasoning. We fall in the trap of scamsters as we lack patience and do not devote time before taking decisions. Let us remember what Leo Tolstoy, one of the greatest authors, said: “The two most powerful warriors are time and patience.” We will not fail if we follow this quote.