Beware! Fraudsters using THESE toll-free lookalike numbers to dupe customers

Banking frauds have increased especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to alert citizens of this country, the Reserve Bank of India has come up with a cautionary circular that is related to fraudulent methods being used by fraudsters to dupe customers and extract confidential information. Taking note of that, the State Bank of India (SBI) has further uploaded the notice on its official website to inform customers about the new fraud.

As per the circular, the fraud comes under the category of social engineering and it is done via mobile numbers which are quite similar to the toll-free numbers used by major banks. Using a very similar feature to that of Supervised Entity’s (SE) Toll-free Number, the fraudsters use phone numbers so that they can register these dubious numbers on mobile caller identification applications like TrueCaller.

Supervised Entities are seen as those institutions which possess legal credibility, be it banks, insurance companies, or other financial institutions and these frauds are made in such a way that if the victim doesn’t apply his presence of mind, he can be easily cheated by giving classified details. 

Picture this, the toll-free numbers start with codes like 800, 888, 844, 855, etc., with a ‘1’ attached to it as a prefix. Generally, it looks something like 1800 223 464.

It happens in a way that a fraudster tries to get a number which is quite similar to a toll-free number, barring prefixes. The number appears to be 800 223 464 and then he gets it registered on a caller identification application under the name of a particular supervised entity, revealed State Bank of India.

Uninformed customers can easily fall into this trap as they will call the fake number instead of the actual number for solving their queries. 

As and when the fraudster gets in touch with the customer via this fraud number, the person asks the victim to reveal sensitive information which can range from debit/credit card details, PAN card details, username, OTP, etc.

This new fraud has created a ruckus among the citizens and to tackle that, the supervised entities will take adequate actions to curb the damage done by the fraudsters as much as possible. They are spreading awareness about the whole fraud process via websites, social media, e-mails, and SMS.