A 52-year-old businessman allegedly lost Rs 60,000 from his bank account, after a mobile application was automatically installed on his mobile phone.
The application was installed when he allegedly clicked on a link sent to his smart phone by an alleged fraudster, pretending to be an official of the income tax department, said the police.
An FIR has been registered at the Sector 10 police station under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal CODE(IPC) on Wednesday against the fraud that took place in September 2018, said Mohammad Azad, assistant sub-inspector(asi), who is the investigation officer in the case.
On September 10, Harish Chander, 52, woke up to find that Rs 60,000 has been deducted from his bank account in two online transactions.
“The OTP that I received on my phone number around 2.30 am, was automatically sent to another number,” Chander said.
He said that about three days before the incident, he had got a message stating that income tax return was being held up.
“I was asked to click on a link, and the app got installed once I clicked on it,” he said. Chander said that later when he went to the bank to complain about the loss of the money, the bank officials told him that he lost the money, as his phone was hacked by the app.
“We have tracked the number to which the OTP was automatically sent, and found that the number is registered in Pune,” the ASI said. But the police are yet to make any arrest in the case.
Raj Singh Nehra, Director of International College for Security Studies in Delhi, said, “Sending links to hack devices is a common practice nowadays. Though we see only one link, there are hundreds of back links to the same, although they are not visible to the user. Eventually, the user’s electronic device gets hacked. The hacker can then access data from the hacked device for illegal activities,” he said.
Nehra also said that people should not click on any doubtful links, as otherwise they can become victims of such frauds.