I am sharing my experience about the scam call I received today, I would like everybody to know how it works and how you avoid falling for it.
This is a new kind of scam that a fake company does by appointing a lot of employees for this. I think they must be getting money also by doing this as not everyone on the receiving end is clever enough to gauge the scam and sometimes it happens over excitement of receiving free gift or products.
I think such people or companies have our contact numbers or addresses and order history as well. Not sure whether it is the ecommerce company like Noise that shares the information with these individuals or fake companies. But having our data and personal information public is the main source or root of the problem.
Disclaimer: I don't think this scam is actually being operated by Noise Company. The objective is just to make you aware of this as many scammers use renowned company names to gain your trust.
Here is what happened with me
In the beginning you will receive a call from a Genuine number, it can be anything. In my case I got call from “Noise” (this was on truecaller). I was surprised by them knowing all my details and address also. This could be because of data leak from Noise purchase history or orders database.
It all starts with them telling you very nice gift scheme that applies to your own city you are living in. The telecaller even told me to record the phone call to mark it a genuine phone call from Noise company.
She told me that they have shortlisted my number for this gift and asked me to choose from the gifts like Sony Bravia TV 50 inch, iPhone etc.
She specifically told me that I don’t have to send any money to them or purchase anything to receive this gift.
However, she quickly also turned around and told me to just add any product worth atleast 5000 Rs to the cart from amazon or noise website, but not to purchase anything, and that they will add gift to the same order.
Later she said they will send 50% cashback of the purchased product as well as the gift you claimed.
Now here is what they do to scam you..
After you add the product to cart she asked details about the product etc. to “confirm” to cost of the product on Amazon.
She later asked to open any UPI app and add the Company Bank account which is tied up with the company according to her.
She asked to tap on Send money button on Amazon homepage, and then add the details of account and IFSC code of bank. It turns out it was DBS bank as shown in the screenshot.
Obviously this has to of someone who is scamming others through this fake scheme.
She later asked me to proceed to send money to this bank, but then I asked why should I send money to bank instead of purchasing the product on Amazon. She could not convince me on phone about this but tried to justify by saying, “This is our company bank account and we will send this as cashback with the gift to your address in 2 days.”
I told her I don’t want to send money to bank. She later asked me if I want to claim this gift or not. I chose not to continue and hung up the phone.
She must have been thinking I wasted her 30mins. But it was actually waste of my time. I was later thinking people should not fall for this trap so I thought about educating people about this scam.
How to avoid getting into this trap
First thing you should understand that company doesn’t do such “free-gifts” scheme on phone calls. Nobody is so wealthy enough to give you the expensive products for free.
You should not have greed (lalach or lobh) of anything. It is very easy to scam greedy people since they get carried away with all the free gifts and benefits they will get from this so called schemes where you are the one who is shortlisted! (for a scam)
Never give them any other personal information, like other phone numbers or anything.
I had watched many scam calls videos on youtube so I was already aware of such methods, there will be different one always but it all ends at the same location.
Watch this video to understand the scammers operation
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