Don’t take the bait: Phishing, vishing and smishing scams on the rise

1. Phishing

• Relies on social engineering and digital deception
• Common forms: Email phishing, spear phishing (targeted), whaling (targeting VIPs), clone phishing
• Often uses urgency (“account suspended”) or rewards (“you won a prize”) to make victim act quickly
• Risk: Financial theft, identity theft, ransomware infection

2. Vishing

• Combines voice communication with fraud
• Uses caller ID spoofing to appear from genuine numbers
• Often plays on fear or authority (tax notices, police cases, loan defaults)
• Scammers may record calls for misuse of voice samples

3. Smishing

• Uses SMS/instant messaging (like WhatsApp)
• Often contains short URLs to hide malicious sites
• Exploits trust in mobile communication
• Common during bank KYC updates, festival offers, or disaster relief scams

How to protect ourselves

1. Awareness & verification

• Never click on suspicious links or attachments in emails/SMS
• Verify the sender independently (call bank/govt. helpline directly)
• Cross-check website URLs for spelling errors and HTTPS

2. Technical safeguards

• Use spam filters, antivirus, and updated software
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for important accounts
• Avoid using public Wi-Fi for financial transactions

3. Behavioural practices

• Never share OTPs, passwords, or PINs over calls/SMS
• Ignore calls requesting urgent payments or personal data

4. For organisations

• Employee cybersecurity training
• Incident reporting mechanisms
• Email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

Report phishing attempts to:

• Indian Cyber Crime Portal: cybercrime.gov.in
• Helpline number: 1930
• CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team)

Civil Services Exam relevance

Prelims: Can be asked as MCQs — e.g., “Which of the following is NOT a form of phishing?”

Mains (GS-III: Internal Security):

• Explain with examples in context of cybercrime trends in India.
• Link with initiatives like the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and Digital India cybersecurity frameworks.