Fraudsters always seem to be one step ahead of time. So whatever new systems are introduced, it doesn’t take them long to expose the chink in the armour. Mobile phones have been asked to link to Aadhar cards, a move apparently was going to strengthen the system or at least not weaken it, but recent events show it hasn’t.
Take the experience of Tania Bhattacharya, living in South suburban Kolkata who got a call from cellphone service provider, offering her a SIM upgrade. The caller wanted her to provide 20 digit SIM number along with Aadhar number and since he didn’t ask any personal details, she didn’t even have an iota of doubt that she was being tricked, she happily furnished all the details. What she didn’t realise was that her bank details were already stolen and within 72 hours, she was duped of Rs 70000.
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“Fraudsters are pretending to upgrade SIM cards and gaining access to any transactions that you conduct through your phone,” explained an officer. “The caller claims to be a customer care representative of the network provider and informs the victim that the SIM could easily be upgraded from 3G to 4G. Alternately, he offers to link the Aadhaar number with the mobile phone. As the victim agrees to continue with the offer, the fraudster tells him to check his messages. He is told he would receive a text to which he must reply by pressing ‘1’. After this call, the victim’s number gets shut down. He remains unaware of the fraud till he sees his bank statements, “
SIM swap fraud is the new headache in Kolkata, says an officer at the anti-bank fraud section of Lalbazar. Aadhar card security is not something that the fraudsters cannot break. The trend of sim swapping had started a while back in US and Europe and is slowly hitting India too, mostly aimed at senior citizens.
Sim Swapping though is only the second step of a fraud attack. The first step involves stealing your bank details by sending a phishing email or by using Trojans or malware. But to be able to use all that data, they need access to your mobile phone and that’s were SIM swapping becomes necessary.
“The scamsters are making the customer apply for a new SIM card and the victim unknowingly accepts the request. The numbers being used to commit the fraud are registered mostly in Jharkhand and Bihar,” said an officer. We have come across a few cases where the SIM has been changed, but no financial frauds have been carried out yet. We are investigating these cases as well” he said.
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