Mumbai: Woman loses phone data by clicking suspicious WhatsApp link, get threatening message from fraudsters

The police have come across a fraud wherein cyber-fraudsters are sending WhatsApp links to unsuspecting people and once the victim clicks the link, the victim's mobile phone contact list and photographs stored in the gallery is stolen by the fraudsters. The fraudsters then misuse the said information to create obscene morphed photographs of the victim and threaten them to pay the money else they would share the said photographs to those in the contact list of the victim. Bhandup police have initiated a probe in one such matter, on the complaint of a 29-year-old housewife.

According to the police, the victim works in a private company. The victim in her complaint has stated that on April 07, she had received a WhatsApp link on her phone and after clicking on the said link, her contact list and photographs in the gallery got stolen. "The victim then received messages in Hindi and English from an unknown number who asked her to pay the money, else he would send her photographs to her relatives and would malign her image. The fraudster also sent the victim an image of her PAN card on which an obscene comment was written about the victim," said a police officer.

He added, "When the victim blocked the said number, she later learnt from her relatives that they had received obscene messages and photographs of the victim from an unknown number. When the victim kept receiving the said messages on her phone, she approached the police and got a criminal offence registered in the matter. We appeal to the citizens not to click any suspicious links or links sent from an unknown number as the fraudsters may use some malware to steal the victim's phone data and misuse them."

The police have registered a case under sections 67 (Punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) and 67A (Punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.