Women’s Day 2023: Looking for gifts online? Beware of free offers, fake quizzes as phishing links flood online

Ahead of International Women’s Day, phishing links mimicking popular shopping portals have flooded the social media. The phishing links include Women’s Day quizzes, free offers on many products and “suprise gifts”.

These spoofed links of popular shopping portals offer gifts for “first 5,000 women who participate in a quiz”.

Gujarat Police advice

“On many of these links, the scammers have claimed that the offer is valid for 500 seconds. Some even have a comments section on the spoofed page with fake users posting messages of how they have benefitted after signing up for online games offering free gifts on Women’s Day,” a senior official of CID cybercrime wing of Gujarat Police was quoted as saying in a report by Times of India.

Many fake messages promise 5G mobile deals in exchange for the user sharing a link with their WhatsApp contacts. People are being urged by the Gujarat Police to refrain from clicking on the links.

“Messages about free gifts that have gone viral have been circulated by cyber fraudsters. Avoid clicking on such links or you will become a victim of cyber fraud,” the Gujarat Police said in its advisory.

Disclaimer: According to the Cyber Crime Cell under the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police, the most common form of online fraud is related to banks, online commerce platforms where fraudsters, posing as bank/ platform officials, convince the victim to share OTP, KYC updates and sometimes send the links to be clicked to access bank accounts.

“People should know that no bank or institution is authorised to demand for bank details or PIN numbers. Unfortunately, educated people are falling prey to online frauds and losing lakhs of rupees,” explained DCP Cyber Crime , Balsingh Rajput.