One of my cousin works in pharma industry, not much involved with IT or Technology. But she knows how to use mobile phone and do lot of shopping. One day I was sitting with her, she got a message from her mobile service provider. After reading the message she was excited and said she will be earning some money in sarcastic way. I asked her what happened, she said the message states the mobile provider had deducted some extra money in last bill, and they want to return that money now. I said, if that’s the case, they should simply adjust with current months bill. My cousin said, when we are getting money we should not wait for later and she continued. I then asked her to show me the message and website. The website matched the look and feel of the mobile service provider except it was a fake one, and the intention was to collect bank data and siphon of money.
This is one example where people are getting fooled. But there are many such cases out there, e.g. fake shopping websites, emails with lottery win message, warning messages that your laptop is hacked and corrupted, etc.
In last couple of years, India is seeing a tremendous growth in digitalization. Internet and mobile devices are available to all and at an affordable rate. Also, Covid has played a major role in pushing people towards online channel. This is fantastic, the more things go online, it opens up more business opportunities, faster transactions and Governance from government perspective. But to support these initiatives, Government and citizens should work together to create awareness amongst people. Each one should own their own set of responsibilities.
Here are some of the tips we need to follow to reduce online frauds.
- a) Use only private computes to access sensitive information (e.g. bank transactions)
- b) Compute and mobile devices should be equipped with Antivirus protection.
- c) Remember, no one is going to give you money or awards for free.
- d) Avoid phishing emails and websites
- e) check authenticity of the website before purchasing from it.
- f) be careful before sharing personal or bank data with others (people or website)
- g) don’t click on links within email if you are not sure of the sender.
- h) don’t keep you mom or girlfriend name as password, keep passwords which is not easy for others to guess, and don’t share with others.
Please check my other blogs following soon.