Building a ‘Cyber Safe India’ is one of the top priorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Central government and Ministry of Home Affairs is committed to curbing cyber crime and protecting people from cyber threats. To deal with cyber crime in the country in a coordinated and comprehensive manner the MHA had started Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C).

Last week, I4C, through its vertical National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit (NCTAU) had identified and recommended over 100 websites involved in organized investment/task based – part time job frauds. Whereas, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), invoking its power under the Information Technology Act, 2000, has blocked these websites. These websites, which facilitated task based/organized illegal investment related economic crimes, were learnt to being operated by overseas actors and they were using digital advertisement, chat messengers and mule/rented accounts. It was also learnt that proceeds from the large scale economic frauds were seen to be laundered out of India using card network, crypto currency, overseas ATM withdrawals and international Fintech companies. In this regard, several complaints were received through 1930 helpline and NCRP and these offences were posing significant threat to the citizens and also involved data security concerns.

The cyber frauds typically involve following steps :

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1. Targeted digital advertisements are launched  on platforms like Google and Meta using key words like”Ghar baithe job”, “Ghar baidhe kamai kaise karen” etc in multiple languages from overseas advertisers. Targets are mostly retired employees, women and unemployed youth looking for part time jobs.

2. Upon clicking the advertisement, an agent using WhatsApp / Telegram starts conversation with the potential victim, who convinces her to perform some tasks like Video Likes and Subscribe, Maps Rating, etc.

3. Upon completion of task, victim is given some commission, initially and is asked to invest more to get more returns against given task.

4. After gaining confidence, when victim deposits larger sum, deposits are frozen and thus victim is duped.

As precautionary measure, it is advised to:-

1. Exercise due diligence before investing in any such very high commission paying online schemes sponsored over internet.

2. If an unknown person contacts you over WhatsApp / Telegram, refrain from performing financial transactions without verification.

3. Verify the name of receiver mentioned in UPI App. If receiver is any random person, it may be a mule account and scheme may be fraudulent. Similarly, check the source from where initial commission is received.

4. Citizens should refrain from doing transactions with unknown accounts, as these could be involved in money laundering and even terror financing and lead to blocking of accounts by police and other legal action.

Also, citizens are also advised to promptly report phone numbers and social media handles used by such fraudsters to the NCRP www.cybercrime.gov.in