Alarming trends in phishing attacks

Madhapur: The number of phone fraud cases in the city is rapidly rising in spite of awareness programmes. What is surprising, even the educated are falling prey to fraudsters. The modus operandi is simple, fraudsters set up their numbers in the guise of customer care and when people search for numbers of customer care of banks in Google, fraudsters call them and take their bank details.

Speaking to The Hans India, S Harinath, ACP-Cybercrime, Rachakonda, said, "The fraudsters can get access to any of the personal details by just a click and thus they easily login to a net banking login page. Once a victim logs in the bank account or provides any confidential numbers like OTP or 6-digit number of their ATM card. The next second their account gets hacked and all the money is transferred to another bank account."

On an average, about 20 cases of these cybercrimes are registered per day. More than 5,200 cases have been registered till October 15 among which phishing calls cases are more.

However, there have been cases where the victims have Googled for customer care numbers and have contacted the fraudsters unknowingly. The fraudsters are finding it much easier to hack the account in cases where the victims transfer some amount through online banking apps like Google pay or PhonePe.

Recently, Krishna, an owner of a Kirana Store in Lalaguda lost Rs 21,000 after he contacted the customer care number while browsing on Google. Phishing calls include cases like emails that contain offers, contacting any fraudster asking you to download app and share OTP or personal details over call. Police department officers say that one should never share bank details to anyone.