State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s biggest lender, has issued a warning that account holders are being tricked into offering up personal banking details.
According to a report in BGR, SBI said messages from WhatsApp and other social media platforms are tricking customers into sharing details of their accounts.
The hackers are tricking the users by first sending a message in an effort to get them to share a one-time password. Some of the WhatsApp messages had an embedded link that installs an app in the background, which is used to get the one-time password from the user’s phone. State Bank of India is allowing customers to get a refund if they report the issue within three business days, noted BRG.
The scam targeting SBI account holders isn’t the only way hackers have been going after consumers in India in recent weeks. In late February, a man was able to trick people out of $250,000 using fake cryptocurrency. According to reports at the time, Pritam Patil asked victims to invest in an initial coin offering of his KBC Coin, which was named after a popular game show in India. He told investors the coin would see a substantial rise. With the cash in hand, he shut down the business and told investors they wouldn’t get their money back.
The use of WhatsApp to target Indian consumers makes sense, given its wide popularity in the country. As of June, the messaging app, which also facilitates digital payments, had more than one million users on its platform.
