Building a “Cyber Safe India” is one of the top priorities of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The Ministry is committed to curbing cybercrime and protecting people from cyber threat actors. This has been stated by the Ministry of Home Affairs in a release today.
“Citizens are also advised to promptly report phone numbers and social media handles used by such fraudsters to the NCRP www.cybercrime.gov.in,” the release adds.
Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) is an initiative of MHA to deal with cybercrime in the country in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
Through its vertical National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit (NCTAU), the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre had last week identified and recommended over 100 websites involved in organized investment and task based-part time job frauds, the release said. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), invoking its power under the Information Technology Act, 2000, has blocked these websites.
These websites, which facilitated task based and organized illegal investment related economic crimes, were being operated by overseas actors and were using digital advertisement, chat messengers and mule and rented accounts.
It was also learnt that proceeds from the large-scale economic frauds were seen to be laundered out of India using card networks, crypto currency, overseas ATM withdrawals and international Fintech companies.
In this regard, several complaints were received through 1930 helpline and NCRP and these offenses were posing significant threat to the citizens and also involved data security concerns, the release from MHA said. These frauds, typically, involve following steps:
- Targeted digital advertisements are launched on platforms like Google and Meta using key words like “Ghar baithe job”, “Ghar baidhe kamai kaise kare” in multiple languages from overseas advertisers. Targets are mostly retired employees, women and unemployed youth looking for part time jobs.
- Upon clicking the advertisement, an agent using WhatsApp and Telegram starts a conversation with the potential victim, who convinces her to perform some tasks like Video Likes and Subscribe and Maps Rating.
- Upon completion of a task, the victim is given some commission, initially and is asked to invest more to get more returns against the given task.
- After gaining confidence, when the victim deposits larger sums, deposits are frozen and thus the victim is duped.
The release from the Ministry of Home Affairs asks users to exercise the following precautionary measures:
- Exercise due diligence before investing in any such very high commission paying online schemes sponsored over the internet.
- If an unknown person contacts you over WhatsApp and Telegram, refrain from performing financial transactions without verification.
- Verify the name of the receiver mentioned in UPI App. If the receiver is any random person, it may be a mule account and the scheme may be fraudulent. Similarly, check the source from where initial commission is received.
- Citizens should refrain from doing transactions with unknown accounts, as these could be involved in money laundering and even terror financing and lead to blocking of accounts by police and other legal action.
