Dwaipayan Ghosh | TNN | Jun 2, 2018, 08:40 IST
KOLKATA: Tania Bhattacharya of Regent Estate in south suburban Kolkata received a call, allegedly from her cellphone service provider two weeks ago and was offered a SIM upgrade. The caller asked her to share her 20-digit SIM number and her Aadhaar number, which she provided. However, what she didn’t realise was that her bank details had already been stolen and, within 72 hours she was duped of Rs 70,000.
“As the caller did not ask for personal details, she divulged her SIM and Aadhaar numbers,” said an officer.
The anti-bank fraud section of Lalbazar said the SIM-swap fraud has become a new headache in Kolkata. While the mobile service providers have reacted to this by making Aadhaar number mandatory to issue a SIM card, the fact that the cops busted a gang working with fake SIMs in central Kolkata has proved that this is not a major challenge for fraudsters.
The operation — which hit the US and Europe in 2013 — began here last year, mostly targeting senior citizens.
“Fraudsters are pretending to upgrade SIM cards and gaining access to any transactions that you conduct through your phone,” explained an officer. “The caller claims to be a customer care representative of the network provider and informs the victim that the SIM could easily be upgraded from 3G to 4G. Alternately, he offers to link the Aadhaar number with the mobile phone. As the victim agrees to continue with the offer, the fraudster tells him to check his messages. He is told he would receive a text to which he must reply by pressing ‘1’. After this call, the victim’s number gets shut down. He remains unaware of the fraud till he sees his bank statements,” he said.
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Mobile service provider should take necessary action such as advertising on this issue so that all will be aware of this.
Raja Datta
SIM swapping is usually the second phase of a fraud attack. Initially, the criminals send a phishing email to get the intended victim’s banking details. These details can also be stolen using trojans or malware. They work towards getting the victim’s personal information and may even go as far as stealing identity and creating fraudulent ID documents. In order to use all of this, they need access to the victim’s mobile messages, hence the SIM is swapped.
“The scamsters are making the customer apply for a new SIM card and the victim unknowingly accepts the request. The numbers being used to commit the fraud are registered mostly in Jharkhand and Bihar,” said an officer. We have come across a few cases where the SIM has been changed, but no financial frauds have been carried out yet. We are investigating these cases as well,” he said.