Case Study 2

Hari receives a call for verification of his bank account details. He receives a link and he fills up his account details in the form available on clicking the link. Soon he gets an OTP which he is asked to give to the caller. After some time, he is surprised to get a message from his bank that Rs. 40,000 has been deducted from his bank account for an online transaction. He realises he has been cheated.

Based on the given information, answer the questions given below. Attempt any four questions.

a. Name the above mentioned type of theft in which Hari's personal information was stolen.

b. State the mistakes Hari made, which lead to his financial loss.

c. Write two safety measures to be taken by Hari to avoid repeating such mistakes in the future.

d. Apart from the bank account details, what is the other type of data that can be stolen by imposters on the internet?

e. Write in brief about any one type of cyber crime, other than the above, that you are aware of.

a. Hari has been a victim of phishing.

b. The mistakes made by Hari include the following:

1. He clicked on an unverified link.
2. He did not check if the URL was secure i.e., had an 'https' in the web address.
3. He provided personal and sensitive information (bank account details) on an unsecured form
4. He shared the received OTP with the unknown caller.

c. Two safety measures Hari can take to avoid such mistakes in the future are:

1. Engage in safe web browsing — Do not open any link from unknown sources or any pop up that appears. Both could be spyware used to plant tracking cookies on our machine, which can steal our information, direct us to bogus phishing sites, and pound us with pop-ups.
2. Avoid sharing personal and sensitive information over phone call — Never share sensitive information such as OTP, bank account details, credit card numbers, usernames, passwords, etc. over a phone call with an unverified caller.

d. Apart from bank account details, other types of data that can be stolen are credit card numbers, usernames, passwords, aadhaar numbers, etc.

e. Another type of cyber crime is cyber stalking. It refers to online stalking where someone uses Internet, chat rooms, social networking sites, emails etc. to stalk his/her victim. Cyber stalker follows the victim online everywhere and keeps posting/sending something which are unsolicited.