Carelessness and Need for Rewards of Customers Becomes a Major Reason for Fraudsters Increase in the Country - Sethurathnam Ravi

S Ravi BSE Former Chairman shares his views on how the increased need for rewards and carelessness are greatly made use of by the fraudsters. “The fraudsters succeed on account of customer’s need for rewards or better returns, increased spending limits, saving while spending and most importantly, carelessness as we seem to have forgotten what our elders taught us that Never Trust Strangers and Greed causes great Disaster”, Mr. Ravi says.

As per the expert’s view, the advancement of technology, increased usage of digital platforms and mobile becoming a one stop device for various financial transactions, has eased the way of receiving and paying money and saving time in paying bills, making investments and also getting reward points. However, like each coin has two sides, this advantage comes with disadvantage of certain cyber threats, phishing, accounts getting hacked, bogus loan/ discount/ cash back offers.

Sethurathnam Ravi

There are also several other threats and scams that are run by fraudsters such as credit limit updating, multi-level marketing, work from home, online shopping, social welfare schemes, etc. to name a few. With technological progress, the fraudsters have also come up with novel ideas to deceive customers. They grow with the technology and adapt their fraud according to the new technological trends. Sethurathnam Ravi shared more insights on the various modus operandi of fraud that are conducted to deceive customers like phishing rackets, ATM fraud, sim cloning, telephone calls asking for OTPs for transactions etc.

“The other meaning of defrauding people are financial help messages on social media/ through emails, use of data filled in various personal forms filled, google forms circulated, e-mails or text messages appearing to be from a legitimate site but are actually part of a scam looking to gain access to one’s accounts or personal information and kyc details shared with third party getting mis-utilized”, the former BSE Chairman detailed, also advising that it is essential that the Customer is Aware and understands that Government agencies do not call one asking for payments and neither does banks call and ask for OTPs.

“As a precaution, one should shred all unwanted documents, cancelled checks or applications that contain personal or financial information. While checking messages on mobile/ email, one must be aware of short URLs used, spelling and grammatical mistakes made and likewise while receiving calls remember the details of relationship manager, if assigned to your accounts, name of the companies spouted during the call, schemes discussed during the call. All the prominent companies coming out with discounts/ offers/ schemes display this critical information on their official website”, S Ravi said.

The key is not to click on suspicious links coming on the SMS and emails. Customers should never leave their mobile numbers/ ID proofs/ address proofs on social media platforms or websites as they can be misused. Sethurathnam Ravi BSE Former Chairman also informed that updating your devices frequently and using multi factor authentications can also help to deal with the new threats. He also encouraged people to not be embarrassed if a fraud had happened and immediately file a complaint. This can help to prevent the fraud from happening in the future.

S Ravi concluded by asking people to remember about the old saying to ‘never trust strangers’, as it can be of great importance in the present era.