Beware of online frauds in festive season, people told

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, October 8

As online sales for Dasehra, Karva Chauth and Diwali are picking up pace, the cyberspace is brimming with a variety of fraudulent offers. Hence, the cyber cell of the Jalandhar police has warned people to exercise extreme caution while handling cyberspace during the festival season or making any online transaction.

It said lucrative deals that offer branded products at discounted prices are meant to attract people. To save extra bucks, people fall prey to such fraudsters and lose their hard-earned money.

In a recent incident, Pooja Sharma, a resident of Rama Mandi, ordered a Samsung smartphone after she received a link on one of her WhatsApp groups. It offered the latest model at one-third of its market price. The link took her to a leading online shopping lookalike portal. The website said the offer expires in the next 30 minutes and there was no cash-on-delivery facility available. In a hurry without cross-checking it, she booked the phone. However, she got the shock of her life when she later realised that she had been duped by online fraudsters.

According to the in-charge, cyber crime cell, Jalandhar, Monika Arora, such cases are common and crooks have intensified their attacks ahead of the festive season. She warned online shoppers to be cautious of fraudsters who are hunting for potential and vulnerable customers by offering them tempting discounts.

“Criminals are encashing opportunities created by leading online retail giants,” she said, adding that people have to act smart while making an online purchase and must check the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of websites.

Talking about cases registered with the cyber cell, Monika said at present cases pertaining to fake Diwali jackpots, lottery offers, etc, are being reported with the cell.

She said cases of fake websites (phishing), transaction fraud, advance fee fraud, hacking of credit or debit cards and piracy were too common these days. Thus, people should make sure that they don’t share their OTPs or passwords with anyone.

Talking to this correspondent, city-based cyber security trainer as well as researcher Mudit Sinha said last year during the festival season, the sales of Flipkart and Amazon hit the mark of 2 billion dollars and one could imagine from the figure the volume of shopping done online.

He said people get mails such as ‘Sale sale sale’, which claim to give good discounts and provide a link. When a person clicks on it, they redirect you to a genuine-looking website of an established company with offers such as ‘ipad in Rs 3,000’’. People often get carried away with such offers and end up sharing their valuable data like details of their credit or debit cards.

Sharing some precautionary tips, Mudit said people should check the website link whether it’s Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

“If the website is only http, there are chances that someone can sniff your data and it could also be an indicator of a fake website,” he said.