In a concerning trend, a surge in fraudulent activities targeting customers of Jammu & Kashmir Bank and other financial institutions has raised alarms. Despite advisories from banks, numerous customers have fallen victim to vishing attempts, leading to substantial financial losses.
The scam primarily involves fraudsters employing phone calls and text messages to extract sensitive financial details, including bank account information, PIN numbers, and passwords. Perpetrators often pose as bank representatives or technical support, making it challenging for individuals to distinguish between genuine and fraudulent calls.
J&K Bank, a prominent financial institution in the region, has been actively alerting customers through SMS and emails about the ongoing scam. Despite these efforts, a significant number of customers continue to share sensitive information with deceptive callers.
The bank has been urging its customers to stay vigilant and not respond to any such calls or messages that requires sharing sensitive financial details.
“ The bank has been stressing upon not sharing sensitive information over the phone, such as PIN numbers or OTPs to any message or on phone. We have been reiterating to our customers that bank officials never ask for any such information over the phone,” said an official at J&K Bank.
Mohammad Aamir, an officer with JK Bank revealed that there was a notable surge in such crimes.
“Due to the on boarding of mobile banking applications offered by banks and third party vendors, cyber crime is witnessing a rapid rise. There are multiple ways adopted by cyber criminals in order to commit fraudulent transactions from accounts of consumers mostly via phone calls”, he said.
Adding, “the caller gives accurate user information in order to extract sensitive financial data from consumers in return and withdraw funds from their operative accounts. In order to address cyber crime, consumers have to be watchful and must avoid sharing sensitive data over the phone calls.”
He said that the banks have already put a spam alert system in place wherein all the consumers are notified via SMS not to disclose financial data over phone.
“All the account holders who have switched to mobile banking are advised to strictly adhere to the advisory from banks to plug the rise of cyber crime. The hackers have resorted to more advanced ways of phishing; the recent one being voice spam. The hacker initiates a voice call on the mobile number and if answered the voice of the consumer is cloned by using Artificial Intelligence tools and used to place panic calls to their family and friends in the hope of convincing them to give them money or access to sensitive information”, he said.
Talking to Rising Kashmir, the officials at the HDFC Bank said that the potential phishing attackers can impersonate government agencies, departments and trade bodies tasked to oversee the government fiscal aid.
“ I received a call and the caller impersonated himself as the ICICI bank staff. He said that your Pre-approved loan of Rs 5 lakhs has been sanctioned and asked for few details. I never had an account with the ICICI bank so there was no question of any loan. It was a scam call which could have extracted my money had I not acted wisely,” Aneela, a customer with HDFC bank said.
Meanwhile the officials at the HDFC bank said that the fraudsters were tricking people having accounts in different banks while the modus operandi was similar involving the calls, messages and emails.
“Recently the scam has emerged again and surged with a number of customers becoming victims to it. We request our esteemed customers not to pay heed to any call, mail or message that seeks personal banking details”, Zubair Ahmad senior Relationship Manager at HDFC bank said.
