Hyderabad: Cyber crooks lay New Year traps

Create fake accounts of hotels, eateries with attractive offers to gain access to victim’s details

Hyderabad: Fake accounts of leading hotels and other eateries in the city were created by fraudsters on social media to lure customers with attractive offers, mostly targeting New Year celebrations.

The offers range from those like ‘Buy one thali, get two on your first order’, to gift vouchers, food coupons and online prizes among others. According to the police, it is a usual practice for prominent eateries having social media accounts to post their pictures, party menus and contact numbers on festive occasions like New Year.

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“It is a simple task for these fraudsters to randomly check for eateries online and create fake profiles on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. The simple technique is to identify the famous and branded eateries which have a majority of customers. They then post attractive offers with a Google document attached to fill personal and bank account details where the customer can place an ‘order’,” police said.

Once the document is filled, the fraudsters can easily gain access to the victim’s bank account details and private photos or other content, they added. The list of victims so far includes business persons and software employees mostly, cybercrime officials said, asking people not to click on such social media posts, which are mostly phishing message links which help hacking of bank accounts and mobile phones.

The Cybercrime team, which has found several such posts ahead of New Year, had warned the public to be wary.

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