What is otp fraud how to avoid being scammed crt in release Advisory All Details

India's National Cyber ​​Security Agency, CERT-IN has issued a necessary advice for people due to the growing OTP fraud in the country. In this, people have been informed about how to avoid OTP (One-Time Password) fraud. With digital payments being rapidly common, scammers have prepared many attentive maneuvers to cheat people to share OTP with them, causing people to suffer losses of up to millions of rupees. Many such incidents have been reported in the recent months, where the fraudsters have tried different ways to OTP from them and have digitally robbed in their bank account. In such a situation, you should also know about OTP fraud well.

What is OTP fraud and do scammers execute this?

OTP fraud is a scam where the fraudsters trick their target to tell their one-time password (OTP). If you do not know, let us know that OTP is usually needed as a verification to meet financial transactions or access accounts. These are sent by the bank via OTP SMS or email. Only after submitting them, the transaction is complete or log in to the account.

It acts as an extra security layer in the security system, which ensures that only authorized users can complete sensitive tasks. However, scamsters take advantage of the lack of awareness of the people, and often show themselves legitimate employees associated with a bank or service provider to achieve this number. Once the OTP is shared, the scamsters use them to take the payment in their own accounts or in some cases log in to their device.

Scammers adopt many different tactics to trick individuals to shares their OTP. They often describe themselves as bank representatives, customer service agents or even government officials to maintain trust. To further strengthen the trust, they often make phone numbers similar to toll-free or official bank number. The fraudulent victim pretends to have a fake problem on his account or to give him attractive prizes to put pressure on the victim. In some cases, they also use fishing websites or apps, which users seem to be similar to the official portal to enter their OTP and personal information.

How to avoid otp fraud

According to Cert-in, keep in mind the information mentioned below to avoid such fraud:-

Beware of calls that look similar to the toll-free number of any bank or authorized company.

Do not share any personal information like credit/debit card details, CVV, OTP, account number, date of birth, debit/credit card number etc. with unknown persons on the phone/online.

Always visit the official website of the bank or an authorized company and verify the number from which the call/SMS has been received.

Do not share OTP on phone calls, emails and SMS for cashback, reward point or any such offer.