Hack Crimes Online How do people become victims of online fraud?

Smartphones, internet and social media have made our lives easier and more entertaining than before. But along with it, problems like crime and fraud increased. Since not every case of online fraud or crime is registered with the police, it is difficult to say how many people in the world become victims of this fraud and cyber crime every day. But online fraud is a truth whose bitter sip the whole world is forced to drink. And the question is can online fraud and cyber crime be stopped?

In Faridabad, adjacent to Delhi, a 17-year-old girl was kept digitally arrested in her house for about 17 days. Because of this, even the family members could not know this. The thugs hacked her mind in such a way that the girl who went to Canada to study considered a crime which she had neither committed nor was aware of. During this time, in the name of bail, he also transferred Rs 2.5 lakh to online fraudsters. The world has named this case as digital arrest.

Actually, the thugs called a 17-year-old girl living in Faridabad and said that her Aadhaar number was linked to a parcel going to Cambodia and the parcel contained many fake passports and other cards. The girl is told that she is involved in the illegal business of human trafficking, the thugs made the call impersonating a Lucknow Customs officer.

The girl got scared, now before the girl could think anything, she is connected to another number and is told that she has been connected to the police station, you should file your report online. As soon as the girl was connected through video call, she saw many police officers in uniform in front of her. The girl was told not to talk to anyone during this period nor to tell anyone about this. Her case is now with the CBI and she is under digital arrest. The girl was scared, upset and disappointed and did the same.

Due to this behavior of the girl, her family members thought that she was preparing for studies, because the victim had to go out for studies after a few days. This game continued for 17 days, later Rs 2.5 lakh was taken from the girl as security and then the same call was disconnected. After 17 days, the girl came out of the room and shared the entire incident with her family and after this a report was lodged in the police station.

It is possible that some people may think that the girl was less intelligent or was a minor and they made her a victim. We are intelligent and nothing like this will happen to us. So listen to the second case also, Bollywood actor Aftab Shivdasani is educated and mature. It was on 8th October last month. A text message came on his phone from an unknown number, in which he related to the bank. KYC i.e. Know Your Customer is a process through which banks or institutions verify the identity and address of a person. So Aftab was also asked to update this detail. And in this message there was also talk of closing their account in case of not updating KYC. Due to which Aftab followed the guidelines to update KYC details and after completing the process, he received a text message that approximately Rs 1.5 lakh has been withdrawn from his account.

Actually, this month a web series has come on Prime Video, its season is one, the name of the web show is “Hack Crimes Online”. In this show, all that has been shown is that today everyone’s bank account is online. His profile is on social media. It is from here that hackers hack social media accounts, blackmail and carry out dangerous cyber crimes like carrying out ransomware attacks against companies. The series tells that people are being monitored 24 hours a day. The show emphasizes that hackers have no age limit and they use many strategies to dupe money from a person. Can even instigate someone to commit suicide.

Actually, this web series has been made keeping in mind the increasing cyber crime and fraud. You see how and in what ways these people choose their victims. A 48 year old woman from Maharashtra teaches tuition to some children at home, one day suddenly she started searching for extra income with the help of online world. For this he visited many websites. After this he got a good job offer, in which he was also offered a good salary.

After searching online, he got the job offer in which he was asked to work from home. This was a part-time job, due to which she could also continue her home tuition work. This entire work was online and the woman found it very easy.

The thugs told the woman that some online links would be provided to her in this part-time job. There will be different social media links in it. Earning can be done by clicking on each link. For this he was asked to connect with a Telegram group.

To win the trust of the woman, the cyber fraudsters first gave a return of Rs 1,000 and then Rs 1,400. Once he won her trust, he lured the woman for more. After this the woman agreed to invest Rs 5 lakh. But after investing, she did not get any return and then she realized that she had become a victim of online fraud. This is not just a matter of a Marathi woman. Earning is offered in exchange for liking videos, social media posts and celebrity posts etc. Many people have become victims of this scam.

This is not just a matter of common people, the surprising thing is that even the technical experts themselves, who have mastered it, get trapped in this trap. Actually, some time ago two technical experts from Bengaluru became victims of this scam. They have suffered a loss of approximately Rs 95 lakh. Both were involved in online work and received good offers from fake companies under which they were promised an opportunity to earn extra money. But later after looting Rs 95 lakh, it was found that he was cheated online.

In fact, a small amount is taken first and profits are given. Due to greed, when people invest a large amount, they are told that they need to invest more to get higher returns. In this way this cycle continues. Victims often realize too late that they have been defrauded. By the time they come to know about this, the scammer would have disappeared. The biggest thing in this game is that online fraud happens very fast. These people steal your money and all your data within 5-10 minutes.

There is also a special thing here. Many times it is seen that those people whose accounts are empty or have very less money in their accounts. Those people remain careless about this matter. They think that when there is no money in the account then where will the fraud come from? Then you should know one thing that you are in a big misunderstanding. Yes, even if you do not have money, you can become a victim of fraud worth lakhs. Do you also think so? So let us tell you that this is an alarm bell for those who say this. Because cyber crime has progressed to such an extent that you can be defrauded of lakhs of rupees even from your account. Now you must be wondering how this can happen. So let us tell you that we are not saying this in the air. A case related to this had come to light in the past months.

Last months, a case came to light of a woman who had zero balance in her account. But he was cheated of thousands of rupees. Actually, this woman had booked a train ticket from her account, after which due to some reason she canceled the ticket. When she checked her account and found that the money had not been returned, the woman immediately sought help from Google Baba and immediately dialed a number visible there.

This was the woman’s biggest mistake. After which a link was sent to the woman. Then she was asked to click on the link, as soon as the woman clicked on the link, the fraudsters cloned her phone. Within no time, about three lakh rupees were withdrawn from another account of the woman. After this, a loan worth lakhs was also taken from the woman’s credit card. In such a situation, it became very difficult for the woman to give the details of her empty account.

If you think this is a very small number of cases, then listen, in the last short period of time, about 39 percent of Indian families have become victims of online financial fraud in the last three years. In the Local Circles survey, 23 percent people said that they became victims of credit or debit card fraud. Whereas 13 percent said that they were cheated by buying, selling and website users.

According to the survey, 13 percent people said that money was taken from them by the website, but the product was not sent. 10 percent said that they became victims of ATM card fraud. Another 10 percent said they were subjected to bank account fraud. Whereas 16 percent said that they were defrauded by adopting some other methods.

Analysis of the data shows that in 30 percent of the families surveyed, at least one member has become a victim of financial fraud. And 9 percent said that many of their family members became victims of this type of fraud.

57 percent said that they or any of their family members were saved from becoming victims of such fraud. Four percent did not clearly express their opinion in this regard. In the survey, opinions of 32,000 people from 331 districts of the country were taken. Of these, 66 percent were men and 34 percent were women.

If you think that all this is just an incident, then let us tell you that in December 2021, the Twitter account of the country’s Prime Minister PM Modi was hacked, after which donations were sought. Apart from this, even big wealthy people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk have been targeted by hackers. Because the scope of online fraud is as big as our earth. While trying to find out where the stolen money went, there comes a time when you realize that nothing can be done now. If the person doing online fraud is sitting in UAE, or he has stolen money online and transferred it to any bank account there, then there is no help from that bank there, nor does the police there provide any help in this. That means there will always be criminals, we cannot stop them completely. But the methods of dealing with them can be improved or precautions can be taken..

Rajeev Choudhary