Police, officials discuss modalities to check debit/credit cards fraud

Handouts prepared by the city police have listed the ways by which the fraudsters lure people into their trap. Commissioner of Police A K Viswanathan said that the meeting was curated after most of the public grievances he received in the last two months were connected to banking fraud. 

The new trend is unknown persons call people and get their card details claiming to connect their account with Aadhaar etc. "Eighty per cent of the cases handled by the Central Crime Branch relate to the new trend," he said. 

According to the data presented at the meet, grievances related to vishing of debit card details were at 852 in 2016, while it has already crossed 1,100 this year. 

In order to clamp down on all kinds of bank frauds, banks were suggested to give their customers the option of blocking their cards themselves in case of a suspicious transaction. 

"There should be a mechanism to empower customers to safeguard themselves from fraudulent activities," said a banking official. They also suggested that banks confirm with customers over phone before processing their e-mail requests in order to avoid risking the customer's money to impersonators. 

Banks were urged to install high-resolution CCTV cameras at ATMs. Particularly, cases where unaware customers provided OTP numbers to fraudsters were 1,840 in 2016 and this year, so far 1,315 cases have been registered. 

The total amount lost in vishing call trend is over Rs 4 crore, while it has touched Rs 1.43 crore this year. Banks wise, State Bank of India recorded highest number of phishing-vishing complaints at 547 amounting to a loss of Rs 337.9 lakh, while Punjab National Bank recorded nine complaints. Overall loss across all banks was calculated to be Rs 7.15 crore.