Beware of cyber frauds!!!

Image credit: Shogo Narita@Unsplash.com

A friend recently fell prey to a scam and ended up transferring a huge amount of money.

When it happens to others or you look at it in retrospect, it may seem avoidable. But it may be harder to detect while it's happening. The only protection we have is raising awareness and having as many safety checks in place as we can.

I'm writing this post to share whatever I think can help. Please share in comments if you have more ideas.

1. All these scams tend to exploit the human emotions of fear and greed. 

=> Learn to recognize these emotions coming up and don't do any financial transaction under the grip of these emotions. Have an agreement with yourself that before doing any financial transaction under fear or greed, you will consult XYZ (any trusted adviser and well-wisher). In most cases they will be able to see through it and bring in sanity. If nothing, it will buy you time and in that additional time you may end up seeing things more clearly.

2. The other thing these scams leverage is the ease of transactions. 

With UPI, netbanking etc. it's possible to do transactions in a single click. This implies losing money is also easy. 

=> Make it harder to do financial transactions above certain value. You can do this by setting transaction limits for each type of transaction. Requiring to increase limits should take some effort from you. Setting the limits high by default is not a convenience. It's a risk. After doing transactions of high value, make sure to bring back the limit to the default low value. 

=> Make it harder to do high value transactions by allowing them only from a laptop (delete the banking app from phone), using a sim which you don't have handy (is kept at a less accessible place), doing it only from home network etc.

3. Keeping all eggs in one basket is risky. 

Segregate your funds and add access protections.

=> Enable UPI only on an account where you keep limited balance (an amount you can afford to lose). 

=> Never use savings account for regular transactions. Instead of parking funds in savings account move them to instruments that are harder to access therefore justifying the effort. In some cases they may also fetch you higher returns.

 4. Defense in depth

=> Look at your assets and think like a scamster. Think how they  can potentially attack you and what could be the impact of it.

=> Prepare a plan for mitigating the high-value attacks and implement the plan right away. 

5. Ignorance is not bliss

=> Help raise awareness in your circles and communities. Protect yourself but don't stop there. Help others too to protect themselves. 

6. Scam vs real life experience

Scams are often smooth and efficient because they are well designed and executed by professionals. Real life is inefficient and slower. 

=> Last year an attempt was made on me which I was able to thwart in the last stages. While it was going on I didn't recognize but later few things stood out:

• The amount of details they provided (FIR number, police station details, confiscated items) made it look realistic.
• The seamless transition from one government dept to another (in this case customs to police) matched a movie. I got a call from another department within seconds of closing call with the first. 
• The "officer" spoke with so much clarity, calmness and perfection and there was no ambient noise in the police station.

=> Become suspicious of ease, speed and efficiency wrt government agencies. The real agencies deal with high volume of cases, limited resources and can't be fast and efficient beyond a point. If things are smooth and effortless, it's probably not a govt agency you are dealing with.

7. Hiding behind a phone is easier than hiding behind an email.

=> As a first step always ask the caller to send the information to your registered email id from their official email id. A genuine caller will have access to both email ids and be able to send it. 

If you receive an email make sure that the email you receive is from the actual domain of the claimed agency and not a look alike. 

8. Report.

=> If you come across crimes or suspicious activity, report it here.

 Stay vigilant. Stay safe.

~S~