‘QR code’ scam on the rise; city cops nab five people in Rajasthan!

The city cops have confirmed that cyber crimes, particularly QR code frauds have gone up of late. Says Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sandeep Patil: “Cheating on OLX/Quikr and other online shopping portals have increased in recent times. A special team of City Crime Branch of 12 officers camped in Rajasthan for 20 days and arrested five accused.” According to him, so far, the cops have traced 200 such cyber frauds.

So what’s a QR code, you ask? Simply put, the criminals are misusing the feature of UPI financial transactions. When you try to pay by any e-wallet like Google Pay or PayTM, you open the app, and hit the ‘pay’ or ‘scan’ button to detect the QR code. The merchant’s name shows up and you enter the amount, type in your pin number and validate the transaction. In this form of scam, the fraudster shares a QR code over a tool like WhatsApp. They ask you to scan the code and receive money in your account, when it’s actually a ‘send money’ request. So the moment you scan, and enter your pin, you would have sent money to the scamster.

Therefore, the cops caution you that you should scan QR only to ‘make’ payments, not to ‘receive’ payments. If someone sends you a QR code by saying that you will receive money, you should not oblige them, and instead immediately report such cases to the cops.

In addition, the cops want you to remember not to share your card number, expiry date, PIN, OTP with anyone, not even to your bank, or any other service provider. There is no procedure where this detail is required. Only fraudsters are after it to cheat you online in the manner explained above.