Mumbai: The cyber police have initiated an inquiry into an alleged phishing racket where customers of the State Bank of India (SBI) were being targeted.
According to police sources, the racket was nipped in the bud when it was brought to the notice of the Mumbai Police top brass, after which it was assigned to the cyber police for investigation.
Confirming that an inquiry had been initiated, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cyber Crime, Akhilesh Singh said, “According to our investigations so far, the perpetrators sent out emails to a large number of people, claiming to be writing from the SBI’s customer care department, and asked them to update their details on the bank’s website.”
Mr Singh said the racket followed the typical modus operandi of a phishing scam, where emails are sent out in bulk, and the gullible are taken in. In this case, only those with accounts with the SBI could be taken in.
“The emails include a link which the customers are supposed to click so that they can update their personal information. The link takes the victims to a website which is almost exactly identical to the actual SBI website, with an option to enter sensitive details like debit cards numbers and Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), which no bank or customer care service department will ever ask for,” Mr. Singh said.
“Only those who are careful and vigilant will notice that the URL of the website is different. In this case, the URL was sbi.me, but it is a discrepancy that is difficult to notice,” he said.
The cyber police have already taken the website off the net, and are now conducting inquiries to find out the Internet Protocol (IP) address which was used to create the website. The police are also investigating whether any SBI customers have actually been conned into revealing sensitive information pertaining to their accounts.
Police officials said that phishing rackets thrive on the ignorance and lack of vigilance on part of the common man, and a typical modus operandi is to send out hundreds of emails claiming to be from banks, government bodies or other such organisations.
There was no comment from the State Bank of India at the time of going to press.
