Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal has warned its customers against the increased number of cyber frauds in India due to a massive growth of online transactions amid the spread of COVID-19 cases. The executive emailed a letter to Airtel subscribers in India to inform them of the two major ways the fraudsters are targeting individuals these days. In one way, Vittal said that the fraudsters call customers pretending to be Airtel employees and dupe them. He added that in another way, cyber frauds are taking place while the customers are making digital payments.
“With the growing second wave of the pandemic and lockdowns in various parts of the country, there has been a massive increase in online transactions. Unfortunately, there has also been a corresponding increase in cyber fraud,” Vittal said in the letter.
He noted that there are common instances where fraudsters pretending to be Airtel employees call or send an SMS message to customers regarding their incomplete Know Your Customer (KYC) form and are asked to install an app called “Airtel Quick Support” from Google Play store. Since the app doesn’t exist on the Play store, the customers are redirected to use the TeamViewer Quick Support app. This allows the fraudster to gain remote access to the customers’ device and take over accounts associated with the device, the executive said.
