The government has taken major action against digital arrest fraud, blocking more than 17,000 WhatsApp accounts. The action was taken on the instructions of I4C, the cyber fraud control wing of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). Most of these WhatsApp numbers are from Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. People fall victim to digital arrests and huge fraud is done on them using foreign numbers through WhatsApp.
Perform operations based on I4C instructions
In the past few months, fraud cases worth crores of rupees have been committed due to digital arrests. The Home Office’s Cyber ​​Fraud Coordination Center (I4C) directed the operation based on digital arrest complaints on the cybercrime portal. After receiving the complaints, I4C asked Meta’s microblogging platform WhatsApp to take action against the accounts.
What is a digital arrest?
This is a new cyber scam in the internet world where scammers pretend to be CBI, ED, income tax officials or officials of large agencies to scare people first and then deceive them. To do this, scammers resort to social engineering to make people believe that the caller is indeed an official. Fearing defamation, people transfer money into the accounts of these scammers.
Digital Arrest Fraud
More than 92,000 cases
According to the government, fraudsters are defrauding more than Rs 6 crore every day through digital arrests. There has been a significant increase in online fraud cases through digital arrests over the past 10 months. According to the report, fraudsters have committed fraud worth Rs 2,140 crore in the past 10 months to a year. Between January and October 2024, a total of 92,334 digital arrests were reported.
Government announces helpline number
Recently, Prime Minister Modi also mentioned the fraud through digital arrests at a public rally. The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued a national internet fraud hotline number 1930. You can call this number to report online fraud.
Also Read – Samsung goes the way of Apple! Galaxy S25 Slim smartphone coming soon, features leaked
