Parents Beware: The Alarming Trend of Impersonation Scams Involving Fake Officers
Executive Summary:
The rise in cybercrime targeting vulnerable individuals, particularly students and their families, has reached alarming levels. Impersonation scams, where fraudsters pose as Law Enforcement Officers, have become increasingly sophisticated, exploiting fear, urgency, and social stigma. This report delves into recent incidents of ransom scams involving fake CBI officers, highlighting the execution methods, psychological impact on victims, and preventive measures. The goal is to raise public awareness and equip individuals with the knowledge needed to protect themselves from such fraudulent activities.
Introduction:
Cybercriminals are evolving their tactics, with impersonation and social engineering at the forefront. Scams involving fake law enforcement officers have become rampant, preying on the fear of legal repercussions and the desire to protect loved ones. This report examines incidents where scammers impersonated CBI officers to extort money from families of students, emphasizing the urgent need for awareness, verification, and preventive measures.
Case Study:
This case study explains how the scammers impersonate themselves for the money targeting students' families.
Targets receive calls from scammers posing as CBI officers. Mostly the families of students are targeted by the fraudsters using sophisticated impersonation and emotional manipulation tactics. In our case study, the targets received calls from unknown international numbers, falsely claiming that the students, along with their friends, were involved in a fabricated rape case. The parents get calls during school or college hours, a time when it is particularly difficult and chaotic for parents to reach their children, adding to the panic and sense of urgency. The scammers manipulate the parents by stating that, due to the students' clean records, they are not officially arrested but would face severe legal consequences unless a sum of money is paid immediately.
Although in these specific cases, the parents did not pay the money, many parents in our country fall victim to such scams, paying large sums out of fear and desperation to protect their children’s futures. The fear of legal repercussions, social stigma, and the potential damage to the students' reputations, the scammers used high-pressure tactics to force compliance.
These incidents may result in significant financial losses, emotional trauma, and a profound loss of trust in communication channels and authorities. This underscores the urgent need for awareness, verification of authority, and prompt reporting of such scams to prevent further victimisation
Modus Operandi:
- Caller ID Spoofing: The scammer used a unknown number and spoofing techniques to mimic a legitimate law enforcement authority.
- Fear Induction: The fraudster played on the family's fear of social stigma, manipulating them into compliance through emotional blackmail.
Analysis:
Our research found that the unknown international numbers used in these scams are not real but are puppet numbers often used for prank calls and fraudulent activities. This incident also raises concerns about data breaches, as the scammers accurately recited students' details, including names and their parents' information, adding a layer of credibility and increasing the pressure on the victims. These incidents result in significant financial losses, emotional trauma, and a profound loss of trust in communication channels and authorities.
Impact on Victims:
- Financial and Psychological Losses: The family may face substantial financial losses, coupled with emotional and psychological distress.
- Loss of Trust in Authorities: Such scams undermine trust in official communication and law enforcement channels.
- Exploitation of Fear and Urgency: Scammers prey on emotions such as fear, urgency, and social stigma to manipulate victims.
- Sophisticated Impersonation Techniques: Using caller ID spoofing, Virtual/Temporary numbers and impersonation of Law Enforcement Officers adds credibility to the scam.
- Lack of Verification: Victims often do not verify the caller's identity, leading to successful scams.
- Significant Psychological Impact: Beyond financial losses, these scams cause lasting emotional trauma and distrust in institutions.
Recommendations:
- Cross-Verification: Always cross-verify with official sources before acting on such claims. Always contact official numbers listed on trusted Government websites to verify any claims made by callers posing as law enforcement.
- Promote Awareness: Educational institutions should conduct regular awareness programs to help students and families recognize and respond to scams.
- Encourage Prompt Reporting: Reporting such incidents to authorities can help track scammers and prevent future cases. Encourage victims to report incidents promptly to local authorities and cybercrime units.
- Enhance Public Awareness: Continuous public awareness campaigns are essential to educate people about the risks and signs of impersonation scams.
- Educational Outreach: Schools and colleges should include Cybersecurity awareness as part of their curriculum, focusing on identifying and responding to scams.
- Parental Guidance and Support: Parents should be encouraged to discuss online safety and scam tactics with their children regularly, fostering a vigilant mindset.
Conclusion:
The rise of impersonation scams targeting students and their families is a growing concern that demands immediate attention. By raising awareness, encouraging verification of claims, and promoting proactive reporting, we can protect vulnerable individuals from falling victim to these manipulative and harmful tactics. It is high time for the authorities, educational institutions, and the public to collaborate in combating these scams and safeguarding our communities. Strengthening data protection measures and enhancing public education on the importance of verifying claims can significantly reduce the impact of these fraudulent schemes and prevent further victimisation.
Related Blogs
Introduction
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has unanimously adopted the first global resolution on Artificial Intelligence (AI), encouraging countries to take into consideration human rights, keeping personal data safe, and further monitoring the threats associated with AI. This non-binding resolution proposed by the United States and co-sponsored by China and over 120 other nations advocates the strengthening of privacy policies. This step is crucial for governments across the world to shape how AI grows because of the dangers it carries that could undermine the protection, promotion, and right to human dignity and fundamental freedoms. The resolution emphasizes the importance of respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms throughout the life cycle of AI systems, highlighting the benefits of digital transformation and safe AI systems.
Key highlights
● This is indeed a landmark move by the UNGA, which adopted the first global resolution on AI. This resolution encourages member countries to safeguard human rights, protect personal data, and monitor AI for risks.
● Global leaders have shown their consensus for safe, secure, trustworthy AI systems that advance sustainable development and respect fundamental freedom.
● Resolution is the latest in a series of initiatives by governments around the world to shape AI. Therefore, AI will have to be created and deployed through the lens of humanity and dignity, Safety and Security, human rights and fundamental freedoms throughout the life cycle of AI systems.
● UN resolution encourages global cooperation, warns against improper AI use, and emphasizes the issues of human rights.
● The resolution aims to protect from potential harm and ensure that everyone can enjoy its benefits. The United States has worked with over 120 countries at the United Nations, including Russia, China, and Cuba, to negotiate the text of the resolution adopted.
Brief Analysis
AI has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with chatbots such as the Chat GPT taking the world by storm. AI has been steadily attempting to replicate human-like thinking and solve problems. Furthermore, machine learning, a key aspect of AI, involves learning from experience and identifying patterns to solve problems autonomously. The contemporary emergence of AI has, however, raised questions about its ethical implications, potential negative impact on society, and whether it is too late to control it.
While AI is capable of solving problems quickly and performing various tasks with ease, it also has its own set of problems. As AI continues to grow, global leaders have called for regulations to prevent significant harm due to the unregulated AI landscape to the world and encourage the use of trustworthy AI. The European Union (EU) has come up with an AI act called the “European AI Act”. Recently, a Senate bill called “The AI Consent Bill” was introduced in the US. Similarly, India is also proactively working towards setting the stage for a more regulated Al landscape by fostering dialogues and taking significant measures. Recently, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued an advisory on AI, which requires explicit permission to deploy under-testing or unreliable AI models related to India's Internet. The following advisory also indicates measures advocating to combat deepfakes or misinformation.
AI has thus become a powerful tool that has raised concerns about its ethical implications and the potential negative influence on society. Governments worldwide are taking action to regulate AI and ensure that it remains safe and effective. Now, the groundbreaking move of the UNGA, which adopted the global resolution on AI, with the support of all 193 U.N. member nations, shows the true potential of efforts by countries to regulate AI and promote safe and responsible use globally.
New AI tools have emerged in the public sphere, which may threaten humanity in an unexpected direction. AI is able to learn by itself through machine learning to improve itself, and developers often are surprised by the emergent abilities and qualities of these tools. The ability to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, images, or sounds, is the most important aspect of the current phase of the ongoing AI Revolution. In the future, AI can have several implications. Hence, it is high time to regulate AI and promote the safe, secure and responsible use of it.
Conclusion
The UNGA has approved its global resolution on AI, marking significant progress towards creating global standards for the responsible development and employment of AI. The resolution underscores the critical need to protect human rights, safeguard personal data, and closely monitor AI technologies for potential hazards. It calls for more robust privacy regulations and recognises the dangers associated with improper AI systems. This profound resolution reflects a unified stance among UN member countries on overseeing AI to prevent possible negative effects and promote safe, secure and trustworthy AI.
References
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Introduction
Bumble’s launch of its ‘Opening Move’ feature has sparked a new narrative on safety and privacy within the digital dating sphere and has garnered mixed reactions from users. It was launched against the backdrop of women stating that the ‘message first’ policy of Bumble was proving to be tedious. Addressing the large-scale review, Bumble launched its ‘Opening Move’ feature, whereby users can either craft or select from pre-set questions which potential matches may choose to answer to start the conversation at first glance. These questions are a segue into meaningful and insightful conversation from the get-go and overstep the traditional effort to start engaging chats between matched users. This feature is an optional feature that users may enable and as such does not prevent a user from exercising the autonomy previously in place.
Innovative Approach to Conversation Starters
Many users consider this feature as innovative; not only does it act as a catalyst for fluid conversation but also cultivates insightful dialogue, fostering meaningful interactions that are devoid of the constraint of superficial small talk. The ‘Opening Moves’ feature may also be aligned with unique scientific research indicating that individuals form their initial attractions within 3-seconds of intimate interaction, thereby proving to be a catalyst to the decision-making process of an individual in the attraction time frame.
Organizational Benefits and Data Insights
From an organisational standpoint, the feature is a unique solution towards localisation challenges faced by apps; the option of writing a personalised ‘Opening Move’ implies setting prompts that are culturally relevant and appropriate in a specific area. Moreover, it is anticipated that Bumble may enhance and improve user experience within the platform through data analysis. Data from responses to an ‘Opening Move’ may provide valuable insights into user preferences and patterns by analysing which pre-set prompts garner more responses over others and how often is a user-written ‘Opening Move’ successful in obtaining a response in comparison with Bumble’s pre-set prompts. A quick glance at Bumble’s privacy policy[1] shows that data storing and transferring of chats between users are not shared with third parties, further safeguarding personal privacy. However, Bumble does use the chat data for its own internal purposes after removing personally identifiable information from chats. The manner of such review and removal of data has not been specified, which may raise challenges depending upon whether the reviewer is a human or an algorithm.
However, some users perceive the feature as counterproductive to the company’s principle of ‘women make the first move’. While Bumble aims to market the feature as a neutral ground for matched users based on the exercise of choice, users see it as a step back into the heteronormative gender expectations that most dating apps conform to, putting the onus of the ‘first move’ on men. Many male users have complained that the feature acts as a catalyst for men to opt out of the dating app and would most likely refrain from interacting with profiles enabled with the ‘Opening Move’ feature, since the pressure to answer in a creative manner is disproportionate with the likelihood their response actually being entertained.[2] Coupled with the female users terming the original protocol as ‘too much effort’, the preset questions of the ‘Opening Move’ feature may actively invite users to categorise potential matches according to arbitrary questions that undermine real-life experiences, perspectives and backgrounds of each individual.[3]
Additionally, complications are likely to arise when a notorious user sets a question that indirectly gleans personal or sensitive, identifiable information. The individual responding may be bullied or be subjected to hateful slurs when they respond to such carefully crafted conversation prompts.
Safety and Privacy Concerns
On the corollary, the appearance of choice may translate into more challenges for women on the platform. The feature may spark an increase in the number of unsolicited, undesirable messages and images from a potential match. The most vulnerable groups at present remain individuals who identify as females and other sexual minorities.[4] At present, there appears to be no mechanism in place to proactively monitor the content of responses, relying instead on user reporting. This approach may prove to be impractical given the potential volume of objectionable messages, necessitating a more efficient solution to address this issue. It is to be noted that in spite of a user reporting, the current redressal systems of online platforms remain lax, largely inadequate and demonstrate ineffectiveness in addressing user concerns or grievances. This lack of proactiveness is violative of the right to redressal provided under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. It is thought that the feature may actually take away user autonomy that Bumble originally aimed to grant since Individuals who identify as introverted, shy, soft-spoken, or non-assertive may refrain from reporting harassing messages altogether, potentially due to discomfort or reluctance to engage in confrontation. Resultantly, it is anticipated that there would be a sharp uptake in cases pertaining to cyberbullying, harassment and hate speech (especially vulgar communications) towards both the user and the potential match.
From an Indian legal perspective, dating apps have to adhere to the Information Technology Act, 2000 [5], the Information Technology (Intermediary and Digital Media Ethics) Rules 2021 [6] and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, that regulates a person’s digital privacy and set standards on the kind of content an intermediary may host. An obligation is cast upon an intermediary to uprise its users on what content is not allowed on its platform in addition to mandating intimation of the user’s digital rights. The lack of automated checks, as mentioned above, is likely to make Bumble non-compliant with the ethical guidelines.
The optional nature of the ‘Opening Move’ grants users some autonomy. However, some technical updates may enhance the user experience of this feature. Technologies like AI are an effective aid in behavioural and predictive analysis. An upgraded ‘matching’ algorithm can analyse the number of un-matches a profile receives, thereby identifying and flagging a profile having multiple lapsed matches. Additionally, the design interface of the application bearing a filter option to filter out flagged profiles would enable a user to be cautious while navigating through the matches. Another possible method of weeding out notorious profiles is by deploying a peer-review system of profiles whereby a user has a singular check-box that enables them to flag a profile. Such a checkbox would ideally be devoid of any option for writing personal comments and would bear a check box stating whether the profile is most or least likely to bully/harass. This would ensure that a binary, precise response is recorded and any coloured remarks are avoided. [7]
Governance and Monitoring Mechanisms
From a governance point of view, a monitoring mechanism on the manner of crafting questions is critical. Systems should be designed to detect certain words/sentences and a specific manner of framing sentences to disallow questions contrary to the national legal framework. An onscreen notification having instructions on generally acceptable manner of conversations as a reminder to users to maintain cyber hygiene while conversing is also proposed as a mandated requirement for platforms. The notification/notice may also include guidelines on what information is safe to share in order to safeguard user privacy. Lastly, a revised privacy policy should establish the legal basis for processing responses to ‘Opening Moves’, thereby bringing it in compliance with national legislations such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
Conclusion
Bumble's 'Opening Move' feature marks the company’s ‘statement’ step to address user concerns regarding initiating conversations on the platform. While it has been praised for fostering more meaningful interactions, it also raises not only ethical concerns but also concerns over user safety. While the 'Opening Move' feature can potentially enhance user experience, its success is largely dependent on Bumble's ability to effectively navigate the complex issues associated with this feature. A more robust monitoring mechanism that utilises newer technology is critical to address user concerns and to ensure compliance with national laws on data privacy.
Endnotes:
- [1] Bumble’s privacy policy https://bumble.com/en-us/privacy
- [2] Discussion thread, r/bumble, Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Bumble/comments/1cgrs0d/women_on_bumble_no_longer_have_to_make_the_first/?share_id=idm6DK7e0lgkD7ZQ2TiTq&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1&rdt=65068
- [3] Mcrea-Hedley, Olivia, “Love on the Apps: When did Dating Become so Political?”, 8 February 2024 https://www.service95.com/the-politics-of-dating-apps/
- [4] Gewirtz-Meydan, A., Volman-Pampanel, D., Opuda, E., & Tarshish, N. (2024). ‘Dating Apps: A New Emerging Platform for Sexual Harassment? A Scoping Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(1), 752-763. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231162969
- [5] Information Technology Act, 2000 https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/13116/1/it_act_2000_updated.pdf
- [6] Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics) Rules 2021 https://www.meity.gov.in/writereaddata/files/Information%20Technology%20%28Intermediary%20Guidelines%20and%20Digital%20Media%20Ethics%20Code%29%20Rules%2C%202021%20%28updated%2006.04.2023%29-.pdf
- [7] Date Confidently: Engaging Features in a Dating App (Use Cases), Consaguous, 10 July 2023 https://www.consagous.co/blog/date-confidently-engaging-features-in-a-dating-app-use-cases
Executive Summary:
A fake photo claiming to show the cricketer Virat Kohli watching a press conference by Rahul Gandhi before a match, has been widely shared on social media. The original photo shows Kohli on his phone with no trace of Gandhi. The incident is claimed to have happened on March 21, 2024, before Kohli's team, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), played Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Many Social Media accounts spread the false image and made it viral.
Claims:
The viral photo falsely claims Indian cricketer Virat Kohli was watching a press conference by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on his phone before an IPL match. Many Social media handlers shared it to suggest Kohli's interest in politics. The photo was shared on various platforms including some online news websites.
Fact Check:
After we came across the viral image posted by social media users, we ran a reverse image search of the viral image. Then we landed on the original image posted by an Instagram account named virat__.forever_ on 21 March.
The caption of the Instagram post reads, “VIRAT KOHLI CHILLING BEFORE THE SHOOT FOR JIO ADVERTISEMENT COMMENCE.❤️”
Evidently, there is no image of Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi on the Phone of Virat Kohli. Moreover, the viral image was published after the original image, which was posted on March 21.
Therefore, it’s apparent that the viral image has been altered, borrowing the original image which was shared on March 21.
Conclusion:
To sum up, the Viral Image is altered from the original image, the original image caption tells Cricketer Virat Kohli chilling Before the Jio Advertisement commences but not watching any politician Interview. This shows that in the age of social media, where false information can spread quickly, critical thinking and fact-checking are more important than ever. It is crucial to check if something is real before sharing it, to avoid spreading false stories.
