Safer Internet Day: Steps To Safeguard Yourself From Online Scams

With more and more online purchases and transactions making an individual’s life easy, there has been a rise in crime related to these transactions. As per a projection made by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Indians are expected to lose over Rs 1.2 lakh crore (nearly 0.7 per cent of the country’s GDP) during the year 2025 due to cyber frauds.

Additionally, as per the data revealed in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report, the number of frauds in the card and internet category surged to 29,082, accounting for 80 per cent of all banking frauds.

It represented a staggering 334 per cent increase from the 6,699 incidents reported in fiscal year 2023.

Steps to Stay Safe From Online Frauds

However, here are a few steps released by Visa for an individual to follow in order to avoid falling into the trap.

1. Secure Your Devices with Biometrics: An individual can utilise security features in their phones and laptops like fingerprints or facial recognition. These options are safer than traditional PINs and passwords that may get compromised, usually for digital payments.

2. Tokenise Cards: The central bank RBI made it mandatory for cards to be tokenised for online transactions so an individual’s payments are safer.

3. Only Share Card Details on Trusted Websites: The biggest and most common red flag is when the website address does not start with https:// which usually indicates that there is a chance of potential security. An individual should ensure that they download apps from a trusted app store to save their sensitive information and decrease the risk of malicious software.

4. Assess Privacy Privacy Policies: Usually the most skipped part of any agreement, usually the most important part that ensures the protection of one’s data.

5. Swift Action When Fraud Happens: If an individual is suspected an online fraud, they should urgently contact their bank or payment provider along with a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Helpline by calling 1930 and reporting unauthorised transactions.

What To Do In Case The Scam Occurs?

As per the RBI website, any third-party scam where the deficiencies’ onus falls neither on the consumer nor the bank but lies elsewhere in the system, and the victim informs the bank within three working days of receiving the communication from the bank regarding the unauthorised transaction. The liability of consumers will be zero per cent in this case as well as in the case when the bank had some issues.

However, in cases where the loss is due to negligence of a consumer, such as where they have shared the payment credentials, the customer will bear the entire loss until they report the unauthorised transaction to the bank. Any loss occurring after the reporting of the unauthorised transaction shall be borne by the bank, as per RBI.