Online job with huge salary? THIS woman lost Rs 1 lakh, here`s how

New Delhi: A young woman was enticed by promises of a lucrative internet career and ended up squandering over a lakh rupees to scammers. When it comes to interacting with strangers online and through phone messages, the woman did exactly what no one should ever do. Fraudsters in Nagpur defrauded the woman of up to Rs.1.13 lakh by promising her a lucrative online job. Police discovered this on Saturday.

A stranger sent a text message to the 23-year-old woman's phone on December 4, according to her complaint. The message's sender claimed to be an e-commerce firm's project manager. According to PTI, the woman was offered an online job with a competitive salary.

The promised income was a whopping Rs 5,000 each day! The recipient of the communication was instructed to click on the link supplied in the message. It then launched an internet page as a result of this action. There was a call for her to register on the page. The procedure of supplying her with the employment could not be finished without this step. She was also asked to pay a fee as part of the registration process.

She paid and enrolled, but the requests for additional money kept rolling in, and the woman kept paying until she realised it was all a hoax and that no work would be forthcoming.

She reported the scammers to the police, who filed a case of cheating against them under IPC section 420 and relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act. The investigation into the perpetrators is ongoing, according to the police.

Criminals have started looking for victims to steal money from through cybercrime as India becomes more digital and work from home becomes more prevalent. People may, however, protect themselves from falling prey to online scammers. Here's what you should concentrate on:

1. Do not click on any links that strangers provide you. Friends and family may send you links to websites you are unfamiliar with, but you should not click on them. The URLs were most likely supplied by hackers, and no one should click on them.

2. If you click on one of these links and end up on a website that looks exactly like a well-known e-commerce site, bank, or other well-known corporate entity, be very cautious because it could very well be a fake website that has been designed to look exactly like the official websites of real companies and banks.

3. Don't be a glutton for punishment. As a result, do not believe strangers' boasts of lucrative employment offers that are far from realistic. Rs 5000 each day should have immediately raised suspicion in this scenario.

4. Do not make any online payments on websites that require you to insert your bank username and password. Always check the URL of the company first. See if there is a symbol of a lock there and that the URL has an 's' in it. For example, https://. The 's' indicates that the connection is secure. If it is without an 's, like this, 'http://, then it is not secure and you should avoid it.

5. Always check for spelling and grammatical mistakes in the written text on these fake websites. You will find that the language is extremely poor, something that no legitimate website will allow.

#mute