People fear taking unknown calls as online scams increase

In recent months, there has been an alarming surge in the number of scam calls targeting citizens. Those who are gullible become victims of online frauds and end up losing everything from money to identity.

Hyderabad: Anjali, on a busy afternoon received a call which claimed to be from a bank agent who had been trying to contact her to get her address details for delivering ‘bank documents’. The purported agent then shared a number with Anjali, asking her to contact and coordinate with a certain ‘delivery agent’ for getting the documents delivered.

Upon dialing the said delivery person, however, Anjali lost access to her SMS inbox, phone book, and emails.

---

It was a case of identity theft and phone hacking! Unfortunately Anjali’s wasn’t a one-off case. It is one among thousands where people have fallen prey to online scams.

In recent months, there has been an alarming surge in the number of scam calls targeting citizens. Those who are gullible become victims of online frauds and end up losing everything from money to identity.

These online scams involve a variety of methods to deceive people into revealing sensitive information. These fraudsters pretend to call from banks, government agencies or from popular companies and lure people into disclosing personal details.

The fear of online scams have forced public to ignore any phone calls coming from unknown numbers, especially from a foreign numbers. Interestingly, most of the scam calls start from the 6 or 8 phone number series.

The seriousness behind such online scams rose, when one such disturbing trend known as the ‘digital arrest’ became very prevalent in India. The scam where fraudsters impersonate law enforcement officials and place individuals under ‘digital house arrest’ to extort money rose alarmingly, compelling the government to create awareness among the public.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed the issue of online scams during the 115th episode of his radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat.’ He had urged the citizens to remain vigilant against such scams and clarified that no government authority would contact an individual via phone or video calls.

The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, a central agency that operates under the Ministry of Home Affairs, reported an average of 7,000 daily cybercrime complaints within four months of 2024, while cyber fraud losses amounted to Rs.11,333 crores in the first nine months of the year.

In an alarming trend, India currently ranks 10th in the World Cybercrime Index, emerging as a hub for increasing online scams.

Going by the rapid rise in the number of such cases, the country could soon feature among the top in cybercrime index, if proper measures are not taken now to curb the growing menace.