Did you Know??

My husband, who has been travelling called me from a random number; changing his voice, acting like a stranger he asked me, "Why have you sent me a WhatsApp message asking for funds?" I asked him, "Who are you and what message are you talking about?"

My heart was rushing. In my mind, I was processing, so this is the 2nd person who has received this message. And just when I was about to apologize, my husband said, "Chill, it is me… I just called you to give you my local number for the next couple of days, as my regular number will not be reachable."

Having relaxed I could just think of a lazy Saturday afternoon last weekend when I received an unsettling call from a friend.

"Is this you who is asking for money?" He asked.

I asked, "What do you mean?"

He said, "I have your WhatsApp message asking to send some funds to your Gpay account. I know you would not ask me for money anytime, hence I called you. I found this strange."

I told this friend, "I am clueless. What are you talking about? And I never sent you any WhatsApp message."

To which he said, "Seems some person has your photo in dp and is using your name to ask for funds,"

I asked him to send me a screenshot and he did so.

My picture and my name were used to ask people for money. I was shocked. Rather didn't know how to react. This was a close friend who called, but what if this imposter has reached my other contacts and sent similar messages? What if people have transferred money already? What would people think why am I asking them for money? With all these questions, I just asked my friend. What do you think I should do?

He said, "Inform your people not to react to this message."

So, I went ahead and drafted an ALERT message on my status as well as put the message in some select groups.

Then I thought about complaining about this. How can someone use my name and photo to do fraud? I have never asked for funds even with my closest friends, acquaintances so far. The act seemed very shameful to me, even though I was not behind it.

I tried checking how I can raise a complaint with WhatsApp but remained clueless after reading a lot of stuff and going thru a lot of sites. The app has a feature to block and report a fraud or person. But only if you have received a message from that person can you block or report them. Here I had not received a fraud message, but a friend did in my name. So, I was clueless about how to complain.

One of my other friends read my status and recommended I reach out to a common friend of ours who is in cyber security and ask him how to raise a complaint. My friend @Chaitanya Kunthe, a cyber security expert immediately helped me with a link to complain. This link belongs to the Cyber Crime, Government of India.

Having seen this site, I remembered using it before to complain against a vendor on Instagram, who turned out to be a fraud company. I also additionally complained on Instagram then, and they blocked the vendor soon and notified me the same. But then, I did not hear any update from the Cyber Crime site.

So, this time, I thought, let's just do the needful, and at least raise the complaint.

I registered my complaint on the link Chaitanya provided and put all the necessary details. Within an hour, I received a call from the Cyber Crime department. The person verified my details and the nature of the fraud, checked on my location, and he himself registered a complaint with my local police station, for which I received an SMS notification. I was told, I might have to visit the police station, if needed.

And man, this was quick, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Although, I lost half my productive day in fending to all this nonsense some imposter created in my name. But a week has passed now, and no other person has called me back to complain.

I would like to ask all of you to complain about any such cyber security-related issues you might face on the site – www.cybercrime.gov.in

Remember, you need to be quick in registering the complaint on this site. It has been my observation; as the site asked, when did the fraud happen?

Let us all be more aware and alert!