Cancellation OTPs, fake offers, and urgent pleas: How scammers are using tactics to defraud people and how to stay safe

From fake promotional offers and cancellation OTPs to urgent calls from strangers, cyber fraudsters are finding new ways to trick even well-educated people. Here’s how scammers exploit fear, stress and urgency, and what you can do to protect yourself from financial fraud.

Cyber frauds in India are becoming increasingly sophisticated, making it extremely difficult even for well-educated people to differentiate between a genuine request and a scam.

Scammers use fear and stress to target even the well-educated

Even well-educated people can fall prey to cyber fraud, often when they least expect it. For Prerna (name changed), a highly qualified working professional, it started with an offer that sounded too good to ignore: buy ₹4,000 worth of products from a well-known skincare website and stand a chance to win an iPhone. On another occasion, a random caller claimed that her father had shared her number and asked her to transfer a specific amount of money. Then came another call, this time from someone claiming to be a Valmo delivery partner, who asked for a cancellation OTP for a cash-on-delivery order.

While Prerna did not fall prey to the scams on the first two occasions, even she was confused by the third attempt. How could she possibly receive a message about a product being out for delivery when she had not placed an order? While she decided to ignore it for the time being, she was taken aback by what happened next.

After the delivery partner reached her apartment, she tried convincing him that this was not her order and must have been a mistake. She repeatedly showed him her order page on the app, which did not have the said order. However, the so-called delivery partner refused to budge and sought a cancellation OTP — a move that Prerna initially thought was harmless, until it wasn't.

After giving him the cancellation OTP, she told her family about the incident. They were aware of this tactic being used to scam people and empty their bank accounts. She immediately went into a state of panic and was asked to change her bank account passwords and UPI app PINs, thereby averting what could have been a traumatic experience for her.

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