A few weeks ago, banks such as SBI and ICICI Bank started warning their account holders of an imminent cyber-attack. This was on the basis of an advisory from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) that cyber-criminals are planning to send malicious emails claiming to be from the government — promising free and mandatory Covid-19 testing.

Thankfully, this expected phishing attack does not seem to have happened, so far. But that does not mean we can let our guard down.

Financial cyber-crime has become a real-and-present danger with the increasing adoption of online banking, mobile banking, fintech apps, and credit and debit cards in the country.

From the simple to the sophisticated, cyber-criminals employ a range of tools to commit financial fraud.

These conmen are an ingenious lot, always on the look-out for vulnerabilities and ways to exploit them.

Things have got worse with the pandemic.

Be alert and on your guard.

Some precautionary steps on your part, along with tightening of security measures by the RBI, should help keep many of these fraudsters at bay. Here are some major tricks conmen deploy and how you can fend off their attacks.

Listen to the podcast.

Story by : Anand  Kalyanaraman

Production: Gitanjali Diwakar, Siddharth, Nivedita V

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