MUMBAI: You could now lose your hard-earned money by dialling up a fake customer care number picked up from Google. As scamsters get more sophisticated in their techniques of conning consumers, this phishing fraud manipulates the consumer into dialling up the conman, and not vice versa.
The modus operandi of fraudsters is to meddle with the customer care numbers of reputed companies and financial institutions on the Internet to misdirect consumers into calling them.
This is done in several ways. The most commonly practiced method is where conmen modify customer care coordinates of a company on Google and use SEO to push their fake number at the top of the search results. Most consumers look up for a service provider’s customer care coordinates on Google when they want to register a complaint with the latter. Frauds take advantage of this basic disposition of consumers.
Not just Google search engine, frauds also replace the original contact coordinates of popular retail stores and banks on Google Maps with their own.
Twitter and Facebook are the other two mediums where frauds temper with customer care coordinates. They closely follow complaints being raised by consumers on Twitter and immediately respond to those posts with their fake numbers.
Another method is where frauds create industry blogs, say on e-commerce shopping, on platforms like Medium and post fake numbers posing as customer care coordinates of companies in that industry.
Preventing and reporting fraud
Facebook, Twitter handles of most big companies and banks are verified so one must pay attention to the Twitter handle that responds to the post.
Most importantly, under any circumstances, do not share banking details, such as card number, CVV, ATM PIN, banking passwords and one-time-password (OTP) with anyone over the phone. As a general practice, no banks and reputed companies ask their customers for confidential details over phone or email.
Last week, State Bank of India (SBI) tweeted a video alerting their consumers of such scams. “Beware of fraudulent customer care numbers. Please refer to the official website of SBI for correct customer care numbers. Refrain from sharing confidential banking information with anyone,” tweeted SBI.
If you do fall prey to online scams and lose money, write to your bank immediately. Most banks have listed their toll-free helpline numbers on their respective
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