Millions of rupees are being swindled through phishing — an organised crime of obtaining personal information through the Internet with the intention of committing fraud.
Criminals use spyware to lay their hands on e-mail passwords and cheat unsuspecting victims of lakhs of rupees
MUMBAI: The net is being cast wide, and at risk is your hard-earned money. Millions of rupees are being swindled through phishing — an organised crime of obtaining personal information through the Internet with the intention of committing fraud. But the police can’t do much to prevent it.
Last week, a 63-year-old retired air force personnel, Shrikant Mahajan, was duped of Rs10.94 lakh in an online scam involving phishing. The police said Mahajan, a resident of Sangli, paid the amount for documentation to avail of nine million UK Pound, he was told, he had won in a lottery. A 27-year-old Nigerian, Blesseo Osas, alias Mark Harry, has been arrested in the case.
The police said there are several forms of phishing. One of the most prevalent modes is what is known as the online lottery scam. The cyber-fraudsters send a spyware in the form of an e-mail with a link to several IDs. When the link - the spyware - is clicked, the fraudsters get access to e-mail passwords.
“Most of the time, the fraudsters doesn’t misuse the passwords,” said deputy commissioner of police (enforcement), Sanjay Mohite, who also heads the cyber crime investigation cell (CCIC) of the Mumbai police. “They go to your contacts’ list, which would provide them several other e-mail addresses. They then send e-mails to those IDs as well.” The fraudsters get e-mail addresses through trial and error also. They send mails to random IDs - those IDs from which the mail bounces obviously do not exist. Either way, the fraudsters end up having a huge database of e-mail addresses, which can be used to lure probable victims and cheat them of lakhs of rupees.
The online lottery scam involves sending e-mails to the addresses obtained through phishing, saying the recipient has won lakhs of rupees in an online lottery or in a lucky draw. “Initially, the e-mailer would ask the recipient to deposit a small amount in a local bank account,” Mohite said.
Once the amount is deposited, the fraudsters tell the recipients that a few more procedures have to be followed to claim the winning amount and that the procedures would take two to three months to complete. In the meantime, the fraudsters try to win the trust of the recipients and make them shell out more money in the name of transaction charges, service charges, tax in advance, etc. The victims are sent certificates “acknowledging” the various payments. But suddenly the e-mails stop and the victims find themselves cheated of lakhs of rupees.
“Greed for money makes the recipients of such e-mails fall for the fraud,” said Mohite.
According to a police official, under the Information Technology Act, only obscenity, tampering with source-code and hacking are crime, carrying a maximum punishment of three years’ imprisonment.
Phishing is not considered an IT-related offence; it amounts to only cheating under the provisions of Indian Penal Code, the official said, not wanting to be named. Hence, fraudsters have no fear of long imprisonment term. Moreover, in most cases, the main culprit operates from abroad, making it difficult for the police to trace them.
But, more pertinently, the police can act only if the victims approach them. Many of them don’t bother to register a police complaint, said the official.
The only way to protect yourself from phishing is by avoiding money transactions on the Internet and spam mails, said cyber expert Vijay Mukhi.
s_somendranath@dnaindia.net
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