Bhavesh's Tryst

Advisory on Cellphone Related Scams & SIM Card Cloning

It is learnt through various sources that more than one lakh mobile subscribers have fallen prey to scams over cellphones. Some notorious people with wrong / criminal intent have adopted various tactics to dupe general public and cause a great amount of inconvenience & trouble to them. Cases of such scams include a phone call from some unknown person claiming that one of your family members (son, daughter, mother, father etc.) have met with an accident or have been kidnapped, and they want you to urgently transfer the money to admit him/her to the hospital or secure his/her release. There have also been a few cases where the miscreants hacked into mobile phone of a person and cloned the SIM card. The cloned SIM was then used to make national and international calls, which were bounced off in the name of original user. Moreover, in the recent past many cases of callers claiming to be working with some courier company or human resources (HR) or a senior employee or client and then requesting personal information such as names, job titles, telephone numbers or e-mail addresses of other employees have also come to light. These callers act & converse with such a great impeccability & plausibility that it becomes almost difficult for the victim to comprehend whether it is a real or prank call. Naturally, when it is a matter of life of one of your family members or someone close to you, you would consider it as real one and yield to the demands of miscreants. 

To give you more insight into this lurking danger, we have collected few cases which are compiled in the enclosed file.

Keeping all these facts in mind, we advise all our employees to be alert and take following steps to guard themselves and their family members against such scams.

1.    Do not give your cellphone to any unknown person.

2.    Before handing your phone for repair, remove the SIM card.

3.    Ask the caller to identify himself / herself when you receive a call from any unknown person.

4.    Do not provide any personal information over the phone.

5.    Please be extra careful while putting out your cellphone numbers or other details on “Social Networking Sites”.

6.    As advised by BSNL in Times of India, dated 02.07.2012, do not call back any missed call starting with +92; #90 or #09 as calling the number back after a missed call may make a user susceptible to SIM card cloning.

7.    Tell the caller that it is the company’s policy not to divulge this type of information over the telephone.

8.    Ask them to forward their inquiry in writing to the head of the department they are seeking information from.

9.    If they become aggressive or insist their inquiry is urgent, tell them that all requests for information about employees must be handled by HR. Ask them to provide the name of their organization, their contact details and location. Pass this information to HR who will return the call.

10.  If the caller claims to be working with RIL, validate the caller's contact information by asking for his/her name, phone number and email address. Send the information via RIL e-mail only; do not disclose any information over the telephone.

Note: - As per the Information and Technology Act 2000, any person sending any electronic mail / message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient of such messages can be booked under section 66A.

posted by Bhavesh Jhaveri  # 9:13 AM