Noticing an increase in SIM swap scams, the city police have issued a fresh round of alerts to all smartphone users, who are seemingly the soft targets for invisible operators behind e-SIM frauds.
Cyber cell officers said that all suspicious calls made in the name of customer care executives requesting to upgrade existing SIM cards should be rejected as a primary step to safety amid rising number of phone number hijacking cases and related bank account hacking.
Police officers with the Hi-tech Crime Investigation Cell, who circulated the alerts on social media platforms for better reach, revealed that nearly 100 such complaints had already been registered across the country, with complainants losing around ₹7 crore. They also revealed that around 20 cases had been registered in Kerala, uncovering the magnitude of the new trickery.
“Usually, the scammers made calls claiming that one needed to upgrade the existing physical SIM to e-SIM by updating the KYC details. People who followed their instructions would automatically receive a QR Code. The moment one exchanged the QR code with them, the operation became a success, and they took control of the newly created e-SIM to retrieve all related banking information,” said a senior police officer with the Kerala Police Cyberdome. As soon as the physical SIM was deactivated, victims found themselves in a perplexing situation and would only discover the related banking fraud after reactivating the blocked physical SIM, he added.
As e-SIMs can be programmed and operated remotely with software support, tracking such incidents also proves to be a herculean task for the cyber squads. Such incidents can be reported to the official helpline—1930. According to cyber cell officers, the intelligent practice is to reject all unfamiliar social media calls and to avoid recklessly exchanging confidential information and data with unknown people. “It is better to approach service providers directly for any issues related to SIM upgrades, KYC updates, or bank transactions,” they reminded.
“Earlier, many had the belief that only senior citizens were the soft targets of such online fraudsters. The nature of cases now being reported proves that even well-educated professionals are falling prey to such traps,” said a senior civil police officer who had been associated with the investigation of numerous cybercrimes in the city. He also pointed out that educated individuals constituted the majority of victims in the recent series of ‘virtual arrest’ cases operated by scammers for money.
Published - September 25, 2024 11:28 pm IST
