Get Smarter than the Online Scammers!

Every day, the number of marketing calls I receive has all of a sudden spiked up. I receive about 10 to 15 calls per day. It's very disturbing. However, the most concerning is the sporadic missed calls I get on WhatsApp from random overseas numbers. Their pattern is to leave three missed calls. The plan is to encourage you to call them back; if you do, your SIM may be cloned. People have warned me not to call back on these numbers.

Last week, late in the evening, I received a video call from the Philippines. When I didn’t receive the call, I started getting frantic messages. The urgency with which these calls were made, to be honest, worried me. Thank God, I didn’t fall prey to the cybercrime goons that night.

Yes, all of this is part of the internet scams, and the scammers are targeting not only adults but children to exhort money. I am particularly worried about children and young people who have access to smartphones with little or no safety nets.

I want to warn you about the ways in which you can fall victim to the predator's more sophisticated method of operation and lose both a sizable sum of money and your peace of mind.

1. offering you work-from-home jobs
2. messages asking you to click malicious links
3. sextortion
4. SIM swaps

Read this article to know more, https://bit.ly/41qImrX about how scammers cheat people.

Another article that caught my eye last week was about over 1,000 trafficking victims who were rescued in the Philippines. Internet scams are not just a problem in India but spread across the region. These trafficking victims are?tricked or coerced into promoting bogus crypto investments. They are from Indonesia, the Philippines, China, and Vietnam, to name a few. They mostly entice strangers into buying cryptocurrency or depositing money into bogus bank accounts after establishing fake romantic relationships.

This might explain the calls I have been receiving from the Philippines lately!

Another article that concerns children in Delhi reports a multi-fold increase in cybercrimes against children in Delhi from 2017 to 2021—over a 3000% rise! Children often click on unknown links and land themselves in online money extortion scams. These scams include online theft, cyberstalking, bullying, identity fraud, and extortion.

So how do we protect ourselves and our children from online scams?

• Never answer the phone or video calls from unknown numbers.
• Never respond to missed calls coming from international numbers.
• Never click on malicious links.
• Educate yourself and your children about online scams.
• Block and report suspicious calls and messages on WhatsApp immediately.
• Control who sees your personal details using privacy controls on WhatsApp.
• Don’t share sensitive information such as a home address, phone number, passwords, credit/debit card numbers, or bank account numbers with unknown callers.
• Report to the cybercrime portal immediately if you or a loved one face a serious threat.

Here’s the link to the National Cyber Crime Repotting Portal, where you can report women's and child-related crimes. The anonymity of the complainant is very well taken care of. Apart from that, you can also report financial crimes as well as other cybercrimes. Don’t forget to click on the resources tab, where you can look for the following:

• cyber safety tips, access a handbook for students on cyber safety, a handbook for tackling cybercrimes;
• cyber awareness: learn about cyber hygiene for cyberspace, financial frauds, job frauds, matrimonial frauds, safe use of social media platforms, and a cybercrime awareness booklet on cyber security awareness;
• FAQs.

Although we don't have much control over cybercrime, we can limit the dangers by educating our families and ourselves about how to use the internet safely. The need to raise awareness of the problems is a crucial next step.

Please help spread this word far and wide.