Scamming has a long history
Perhaps scamming or the attempt to scam you and the rest of us is a process going on from the time the concept of money took birth.
It would be safe to assume that as the way we use and handle money evolved so has the techniques used by scammers.
Cut to the present times ….
Not so long ago one would receive a phone call with a live person at the other end posing as a bank employee or someone working at the post office or courier company.
He would try all his skill in an attempt to extract an OTP (one time password) from unsuspecting users.
If you are wondering what is the idea of obtaining an OTP then you have to look at the role of a mobile number and how it is linked to a bank account.
To understand this we take the example of India. Every bank account holder in India has to share his mobile number with the bank at the point of start of his relationship with the bank.
This phone number becomes the registered channel of communication between the bank and the user.
This mobile may be used for sending SMS communications as well as one time passwords or OTP’s to the end user for the purpose of login to the online banking portal website or the validation of a transaction via a password.
For Indian users this mobile number is also linked with the Aadhar card of the user. Now each user has to link his Aadhar card and PAN card (Permanent account number) provided by the income tax department.
Thus in case someone has access to a user's registered mobile phone then he can control the outflow of funds.
With this information it would be easier to understand why a scammer would phone a user and ask for the bank OTP to login to a bank account or to do a high value financial transaction.
Over time attempts have been made by scammers to trick the unsuspecting user to apply settings to the phone that cause the SMS messages and OTP’s to get automatically forwarded to the scammers mobile number.
The use of technology to upscale the scamming business
Recently the scammers have started setting up IVR’s to instruct the user to part with his sensitive information.
A case in point is the post office scam doing the rounds.
Here the target user receives an automated phone call where the prerecorded voice informs the user that he call is from the post office.
It further states that the user has received a parcel which is lying as an unclaimed parcel. In order to receive the package the user is supposed to punch a few numbers on his mobile.
This numeric code that the scammer wants you to enter in your mobile would set up a message forwarding service on the user's mobile.
This service once activated would auto forward SMS messages that a users receives thus the scammers would be able to access all the incoming SMS messages and critical and personal bank information that is sent to the user.
This information lets the user syphon the money out of the users account into a third party account.
The use of automation and IVR perhaps gives a more professional feel to the scamming system.
Besides this is a good opportunity for the scammer to upscale their scamming operations.
Now no more sweet talk is needed from the scammers side instead a business like approach is adopted by the scammers.
Using this trick they are able to target a large number of unsuspecting users all at the same time.
Some may feel that the scammers are good at programming and automation however the fact is that some of the tools they use have been provided to them at dedicated hacking platforms making it easy to set up such scams.
Users need to be more aware
Users need to be made aware about such scams and quick actions need to be taken by the authorities to block such scamming activity and take legal actions against such scammers.
Be aware and be prepared with Inleo
The inleo community wishes that you and your finances stay protected and safe at all times with this intent we bring to you information that you could use.
In addition you could joining inleo via this link
Opening image created with Microsoft image creator