Cyber criminal on the line

26-year-old Jisbin Mathew woke up with a call from the number 8097167603. The caller claimed to be from a private bank where he had an account. "I got a call and I was told by the customer care executive that my credit card was being misused. The executive who was talking in fluent English said that the amount of Rs 70,000 had been drawn from my credit card to book various air tickets. Then she insisted that if I could give her my bank details she could block the card and cancel the transactions," said Jisbin.

Jisbin got suspicious, as he had previously worked with a bank. All the private banks clearly mention in their rules and regulations for customers not to disclose their secret codes or card number to anyone, not even to the bank executive.

To verify the authenticity of the calls, Jisbin started asking questions and mean while logged on to the Internet banking site to actually see whether any transactions had been made. "I was asking all sorts of questions and the caller started hesitating. I asked that if he was calling from customer care then he must know all my details and about all the transaction made. How come the bank knew that someone had misused my card? Generally a customer notices it before informing the bank," Jisbin added.

The caller suddenly disconnected the call and my Internet banking was showing that the card hadn't been misused. There were no unexplained transactions made. I called up the bank helpline number to inform about the same. The bank said it was a bogus call. Again when I called back on that number the it was switched off.
Jisbin immediately informed the nearest police station and also gave a written complaint.

"We have received the complaint and we are tracing the person who owns the number. This is a first of its kind case and we have informed the cyber crime team," said a senior police official.

According to cyber crime experts, criminals are now adopting new methods to dupe people. "It is clear that criminals have started posing as saviours. By impersonating bank employees and informing you about the misuse of your credit card they win your confidence and take away your confidential bank details. This is a new of attacking credit card holders," said Vivek Vohra, Delhi-based cyber crime expert.

PHISIHING EXPEDITION
With cyber criminals adopting newer ways of attacking consumers and corporates via social networking sites, security solutions need to evolve from just providing antivirus protection, software maker Symantec said recently. According to a study, in 2009 Indian enterprises lost Rs 58 lakh due to cyber attacks. This is set to increase further if companies do not take appropriate measures to protect themselves from various threats that lead to not just financial setbacks but also loss of crucial data.
Cyber criminals are using various means such as social networking and posting malicious links in instant messengers (IMs) along with spam mails. With the increasing popularity of social networking sites, Symantec expects frauds against site users to grow as well.
As further validation that this trend is indeed developing, Facebook recently updated its application authorisation system in an effort to reduce the number of spams and misleading applications being propagated via their network.

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