70% of online financial frauds in Gujarat are UPI-related

Cases of cyber fraud and crime are increasing in the state of Gujarat. Since people are making most digital payments through UPI, fraud is also increasing in this case. It is worth mentioning that whether you have to pay 10 rupees for a teapot or 1000 rupees in a cafe, now people are making all payments through unified payments interface (UPI). Simply scan the code on the phone and the money from the bank account or digital wallet reaches the shopper’s account. However, the other bad side of this coin is that some anti-social elements have taken advantage of this. They have tried to rob people by scanning the code and asking for OTP. Let us take note of such cases.

The number of online frauds increased in Gujarat
In Gujarat alone, around 70 percent of online fraud cases were reported. Last year, the percentage of UPI payment fraud was up to 70 percent. According to media reports, Gujarat CID received 88,000 cyber crime complaints. It is to be noted that 1930 which is the helpline for making complaints related to cybercrime is constantly receiving calls from people.

70 percent UPI related fraud
Cybercrime is continuously increasing in the state of Gujarat. On the other hand, even in 1930 helpline, cases of this are constantly coming up. According to media reports, CID received 80 thousand cyber fraud cases out of which 78,005 cases were related to online payment fraud. On the other hand, 52,575 people i.e. about 70 percent of these people were scammed after scanning the UPI code.

Most UPI Fraud in Ahmedabad
According to the complaint, most UPI frauds were reported in Ahmedabad city. Here, 12,581 people filed complaints about this. On the other hand, 6471 cases were reported in Surat, 3936 in Vadodara, 1879 in Rajkot. UPI’s real time payment system has been developed by the National Payments Corporation of India.

Cheating someone by revealing confidential financial information is a way to do UPI fraud. Fraudsters use several methods to trick victims. SMS phishing scams are the most used, followed by access fraud via screen mirroring apps. But most if any frauds are occurring, they are OTP pincode related frauds.

Auto debit amount scams on the rise
Fraudsters offer lucrative deals to carry out phishing scams. Along with this, I also run bulk SMS. “Fraudsters can send you unauthorized payment links via SMS. This fake bank URL will look like the real URL. If you click the link quickly it will take you to the UPI app installed on your phone and ask you to click for auto-debit. Once you give the permission, the amount will be debited from the UPI app immediately.”

Online fraud with screen mirroring
A CID Crime (Cybercell) official said, “Clicking on a fake URL can also infect your phone with viruses/malware. which are designed to steal financial information stored on any device. In addition, fraudsters also carry out scams by posing as bank representatives. which will call you for verification purpose and then ask you to download screen mirroring application for this. This allows them to have full access to the phone.

Many scammers also make it easy for their victims to give their PIN number, the official said, adding that victims forget that the PIN or OTP is only required to send money. No kind of OTP is required when we want to withdraw money.

In July 2018, TRAI brought in a regulation to curb the menace of unwanted SMS from alphabetic short codes. Because they seemed genuine to the customers. “This rule came into effect in March 2019. These days, you’ll see far fewer phishing messages as TRAI has mandated blockchain-based distributed ledger technology (DLT) across TSPs. So that shortcodes and standard templates used to send fraudulent bulk SMS can be removed.

TRAI made strict arrangements
It is now the TSP’s responsibility to check the content of templates before approval. In addition, marketing companies seeking to send short codes were asked to submit detailed KYC. Director of Gujarat Sumit Mishra said that when these rules were implemented, authorities saw a 40% reduction in the 4 lakh applications for short codes submitted by companies across the country.

Mishra said that currently SMS is sent using 10-digit mobile number. Our TSPs have started using artificial intelligence to remove SMS containing words like KYC or any language used by phishing scammers. Scammers improvise by removing spaces or introducing small errors to avoid notification. But this is also being caught by the AI ​​software as it is constantly learning about this. Jsnewstimes