Centre unveils cyber safety initiative, blocks 100 fake job websites

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday (December 6) unveiled the 'Cyber Safe India' initiative to curb cybercrime and protect people from cyber threat actors. An MHA release advised citizens to promptly report phone numbers and social media handles used by such fraudsters to the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), at www.cybercrime.gov.in.

"The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) is an initiative of MHA to deal with cybercrime in the country in a coordinated and comprehensive manner," said the release. "I4C, MHA, through its vertical National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit (NCTAU), had last week identified and recommended over 100 websites involved in organised investment- / task-based part-time job frauds. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), invoking its power under the Information Technology Act, 2000, blocked these websites.

"These websites, which facilitated task-based or organised illegal investment related economic crimes, were learnt to being operated by overseas actors and they were using digital advertisement, chat messengers and mule / rented accounts. It was also learnt that proceeds from the large scale economic frauds were seen to be laundered out of India using card network, crypto currency, overseas ATM withdrawals and international fintech companies. In this regard, several complaints were received through the 1930 helpline and NCRP and these offences were posing significant threat to the citizens and also involved data security concerns, said the relase.

The MHA release then went on to list the various steps taken by fraudulent entities:

1. Targeted digital advertisements are launched on platforms like Google and Meta using key words like ghar baithe ('stay-at-home') job, ghar baithe kamai kaise karen ('how to earn money sitting at home') etc in multiple languages from overseas advertisers. Targets are mostly retired employees, women and unemployed youth looking for part time jobs.

2. Upon clicking the advertisement, an agent using WhatsApp or Telegram starts conversation with the potential victim, convincing him/her to perform some tasks like video likes and subscribe, maps rating, etc.

3. Upon completion of task, victim is given some commission, initially and is asked to invest more to get more returns against given task.

4. After gaining confidence, when victim deposits larger sum, deposits are frozen and thus victim is duped.

The MHA also listed precautionary measures that citizens can take:

1. Exercise due diligence before investing in any such very high commission paying online schemes sponsored over internet.

2. If an unknown person contacts you over WhatsApp / Telegram, refrain from performing financial transactions without verification.

3. Verify the name of receiver mentioned in UPI app. If receiver is any random person, it may be a mule account and scheme may be fraudulent. Similarly, check the source from where initial commission is received.

4. Citizens should refrain from doing transactions with unknown accounts, as these could be involved in money laundering and even terror financing and lead to blocking of accounts by police and other legal action.