SHILLONG, July 12: Police have warned the general public against a new smishing campaign run by cybercriminals where they impersonate government officials to defraud citizens.
Messages regarding violations such as traffic violations, municipal regulation violations, COVID-19 lockdown violations etc are sent to citizens, who are also told to pay a fine through an online payment gateway, the police said in a statement issued here on Monday.
“Smishing attacks attempt to dupe mobile users with phoney text messages containing links to legitimate looking, but fraudulent sites,” it added.
The “fraudsters” have fake online credentials (government emails, government websites, payment gateway IDs) impersonating a government official or a government entity, which is used by them to convince their victims to make the payment, ultimately leading to financial loss to the victim, the police said.
“Due to COVID-19 restrictions various government offices have relied on the internet to communicate to citizens, which has increased the vulnerability against recent cybercrimes. These smishing campaigns are intended to defraud citizens of their hard-earned money. Therefore, it is strongly advised to be vigilant before making any upfront payment to an unknown person claiming to be a government official/ entity,” the police advised.
“Do not reply to unknown SMSs and avoid clicking on unknown/suspicious links. Pay attention to URLs to check credibility of the website, and check through other government website or call the concerned department to verify the same,” it added.
