Hyderabad police caution citizens against rising OTP frauds

The Cyber Crimes Wing of Hyderabad Police has issued a nationalist advisory cautioning citizens against a crisp emergence successful frauds involving one-tome passwords, which are being exploited to summation unauthorised entree to slope accounts, integer wallets and idiosyncratic data.

Police said cyber fraudsters usage deceptive telephone calls, SMS, WhatsApp texts, fake customer-care numbers and phishing websites to instrumentality radical into sharing OTPs. Once the OTP is disclosed, criminals are capable to siphon disconnected money, misuse recognition cards, instrumentality implicit e-commerce accounts and perpetrate individuality theft, often causing terrible fiscal losses.

According to officials, fraudsters commonly airs arsenic slope representatives claiming that a customer’s account, debit paper oregon KYC volition beryllium blocked unless an OTP is shared. In different cases, victims are lured with fake refunds, cashback offers oregon acquisition vouchers, oregon are misled portion searching for customer-care numbers online, which are answered by scammers posing arsenic enactment staff.

Police besides flagged cases wherever fraudsters committedness instant loans oregon occupation approvals, nonstop fake UPI cod requests nether the guise of crediting money, oregon impersonate transportation agents seeking OTPs to verify returns oregon refunds. In immoderate instances, criminals usage OTPs to transportation retired SIM swap frauds, allowing them to intercept banking alerts and further transactions.

The officials urged the nationalist to retrieve that nary bank, authorities agency, e-commerce level oregon transportation work ever asks for OTPs. Citizens person been advised not to o.k. chartless UPI requests, debar sharing screenshots of messages containing OTPs, and to verify customer-care numbers lone done authoritative websites oregon mobile applications.

Citizens person besides been encouraged to activate SIM locks, instrumentality surface locks and slope transaction alerts. Any suspected cyber fraud should beryllium reported instantly to the National Cybercrime Helpline astatine 1930 oregon done the cybercrime reporting portal.