Beware: Cyber crooks on prowl with spoofing apps to fleece

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Use of spoofing applications to blackmail elite class people for extorting money is witnessing a surge in the city. To make the matters worse, such incidents go under-reported at the police stations thus giving a tacit approval to the cyber crooks to continue with their crime and fleece people.

The cyber fraudsters have resorted to novel ways to dupe people of money, by installing spoofing applications on their device to conceal their identity and use another person’s tele-identity to blackmail people.

The cyber fraudsters utilize spoofing applications available on Google play store and other third-party websites to specifically target leading businessmen or proprietors of other businesses in Bhopal and blackmail them for extorting money, by assuming the tele-identity of administrative official or political leaders.

Majority of the people who are being targeted usually possess black money, illegal assets and have resorted to illicit ways of making more money, following which they are intimidated by cyber fraudsters for money warning them of legal action otherwise.

It is noteworthy that the use of spoofing apps for such purposes was in force for a long time, but surprisingly such cases went under-reported by the victims at police stations. The LBS hospital incident became the first of its kind to be reported in the police, after which the ‘new way’ of committing cyber fraud came to fore.

Ascertaining identity of crooks a herculean task

Bhopal crime branch officials told Free Press that spoofing applications are tools deployed by cyber crooks to siphon off money. Flagging concern, the officials said though access to such applications is barred, there are plenty of other such apps on the internet, which are accessible and their roots are traced from countries like the USA and UK. Thus, tracing the fraudster becomes a herculean task, they added. Officials suggested that in case an individual receives such an intimidating phone call, he/she must verify the same with the body from where the fraudsters claimed to have called them.