If you have a friend or relative who freely reveals his or her personal information such as phone numbers, email IDs and details of family members, you’d better warn them.

Using social engineering skills (culling out basic information such as date of births, mother’s maiden name, email IDs, phone numbers and photos posted on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram ), it’s quite easy for cyber criminals to create a fake ID.

Cyber security experts, for long, have been warning about possible creation of fake IDs using the publicly available information online.

The Cyber Crime sleuths of Cyberabad Police have busted a racket where cyber criminals recreated fake IDs of four techies who were killed in accidents.

“Using these fake IDs, they gained access to their bank accounts and stole money from their accounts and credit cards,’’ Cyberabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar has said.

Modus operandi

Here’s a new modus operandi that was unearthed by a Cyberbad Cyber Crimes cops where a clique built a fake profile on a dead techie’s name, reactivated his SIM and got access to his bank account and tap the pre-approved loans.

Acting on a complaint by a local branch of HDFC Bank, the Cyberabad police have busted a cyber crime by arresting six people. “We found four such crimes committed by the accused to steal an aggregate amount of about ₹54 lakh,” a Cyberabad Police officer said..

Interestingly, all the four victims were from four different IT companies. They died in accidents during September-November last year.

A total of five banks and a financial service company were duped by the accused.

“People should not reveal their personal information online. It is very important for the kin and friends to ensure proper winding up of the bank accounts of the deceased in order to check frauds,” a cyber security expert said.

Precautions

The Cyber Crimes police have a word of caution to those active online, particularly on social media.

* Don’t share your personal information in any of the social media platforms.

* Check in Google (search engine) to find out whether your personal information is seen in the search results. Report the same and get such info removed from the sites.

* Banks, companies and friends should not to reveal their phone numbers and that of their friends randomly to strangers.

* Banks should not give away the sensitive information such as account numbers, customer IDs and email addresses of their customers without cross-checking the authenticity of the person who is seeking the info.

* Telecom firms should take enough care while issuing SIMs.

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