Just yesterday, we wrote about how one resident of Lingarajpuram shared his bank’s OTP on phone to strangers and lost Rs 41884. And now, an HSR resident has suffered the same fate.
On September 28, 55-year-old Krishna Rama Bhakare, a resident of Sector 2, Somasundrapalya, got a call at midnight from someone masquerading himself as a banker.
Sending him into a panic mode that his card was locked out, and they need to ascertain if he is the genuine card holder, the cheat gets him to reveal his debit card number and the OTP. By this, he was able to easily swap his SIM (a genuine procedure when you lose your SIM) and take hold of his bank account. The result is that Krishna lost Rs 27,738, and filed a complaint with the Cybercrime police station yesterday (October 4).
When anyone claiming to be from your bank calls you at unearthly hours when you have made no banking transaction, don’t trust them so easily. And never, ever share your OTP, bank account number or PIN. The banks are never supposed to ask you that.
If your card is stolen, lost or locked out, it’s best to go to the nearest bank branch and get it resolved. Many websites have been set up that give the wrong service numbers of banks. So it’s important that you have the emergency phone numbers now to deal with a future eventuality.
In another incident that was revealed by a complaint yesterday, Rajesh D, a resident of RR Layout, was cheated of Rs 60,000. On October 2, 2018, someone had taken away a whopping sum from his ICICI bank credit card.
One way to guard yourself against this is to try and use a mobile wallet like Paytm or Google Tez. Another safeguard is to limit your credit card spending to just Rs 1000 a day. That way, even if you are defrauded, the amount would not be so high. Since there have been cases of bank officials colluding with fraudsters in carrying out these scams, you can never trust anybody. Taking these precautionary measures is a surefire way of staying safe and secure.
