Ranchi (Jharkhand): As the year ends, festivities begin and shopping on the internet sees a marked increase, cyber-criminals have resorted to newer tactics such as manipulated cloning of popular online shopping websites to dupe people.
Many cases have come forward wherein cyber-criminals duped consumers by creating fake websites using subtle manipulation in the URLs of the original commercial websites.
The new Omicron variant has pushed more people to online shopping. Every day, people spend millions buying new year and Christmas gifts. Companies and even small-businesses that used to operate offline earlier have been compelled to sell their products online as well. Taking advantage of the time and the situation, cybercriminals are out, actively laying traps to catch their next prey.
While explaining how these cyber-criminals go about their deceitful plans, the Superintendent of Police (CID) Karthik S said that cyber-criminals make a subtle change in the name of the website, which would not be easily visible to the eyes of the consumers.
"For example, if they replace the 'o' in the 'Amazon' with the number zero, we would not be able to easily notice it unless seen very minutely. They do similar such things with other websites to gain the trust of the consumer before duping them," he said.
Cyber-criminals, he said, use bulk messaging applications to add to the effectiveness of their trap. Through this app, messages can be sent to hundreds of people at once, that too in a manipulated format. The criminals may copy the formats of the messages sent by banks or commercial companies and text them on the consumers' numbers. However, if carefully noticed, one may find grammatical mistakes in these fake messages, unlike the original ones.