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PRIZE SCAM: If you have to pay to get the prize, it's not a prize

Awareness is necessity

Have you ever got any calls stating that you have won a prize or lottery from any online shopping website?

The chances are these calls are fraud



As a Cyber volunteer, I have analyzed some case studies of these kinds of frauds.
Let’s understand how this type of fraud happens !!

The fraudster calls you imposing as an employee from any trusted online shopping site. They try to convince you by giving you the details about your last purchase from the site, with the product and order details.

When a person believes that the fraudster is an employee from the online site, they give them attractive schemes about different prizes like laptop, T.V, mobile phones and give an option to select one prize from them.When you show some interest and select a prize from the mentioned prize, they send us a link as SMS. The link sent is the fraud link which asks for our registration details like bank details as well as personal information. While registration they ask us to pay just the shipping and handling charges to get it delivered to your place.After all the process and paying the fees you find out there is no prize.

One such case happened recently where a victim lost their ₹ 96,000/-. For such scams, tracing back fraudsters is very difficult.

So the way we can avoid such crime is by:

  1. Be aware and never believe in this kind of fraud call.
  2. No shopping website calls informing about the prize or lottery.
  3. Never give personal details, bank details or OTP over the phone to anyone.
  4. Ignore messages and calls of lottery and lucky draw. especially if you have not entered any lucky draw.
  5. Inform about such crimes on the government portals mentioned:
    • All over India- : http://cybercrime.gov.in
    • For Gujarat- :cc-cid@gujarat.gov.in
    • For cybercrime helpline- :1800-1800191 or 155260
    • For financial fraud emergency number- :100/112

Whenever we need emergency help for any physical crime we approach the police department by dialling 100, the same should be done in the case of cyber crimes too.

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