A few days before Diwali, a Mumbai based engineer on a maternity leave to look after her new-born woke up to a shocking discovery from her bank as she was informed that she has fallen prey to a debit card fraud. While she was asleep, her debit card was used online to carry out 56 transactions, resulting in a loss of Rs 3.3 lakh, reported Times of India.
Around 2:30 am an automated phone call from the bank in which she has a savings account, alerted her about transactions carried out on her debit card and told her to reach out to customer care if the transactions had not been made by her. Upon receiving her response, customer care got her card blocked immediately and she also lodged a complaint with the Kanjumarg police, however, there are no remarkable leads on the case yet.
The unfortunate incident happened just a few days before Diwali and ruined the Diwali plans for the Mumbai techie's family. Notably, the transactions were made internationally and the owner did not receive any text or call requesting a one-time password (OTP). According to the statements given by the victim and her husband, they had never used the particular debit card internationally before. They had used it lately on domestic websites while shopping for baby products.
What experts have to say about the fraud?
While commenting on the matter, cybersecurity expert, Vicky Shah said, "There could be various reasons how this happened. One of the possibilities is that the card could have been cloned. When a card is used internationally, an OTP is not required. Another possibility is that the card details were compromised. There were recent reports about details of 1.3 million cards being leaked. It’s a matter under police investigation." He also pointed out the RBI norms, which bound the bank to reverse the lost amount back into the victim's bank account within a time frame of 10 days as the transaction was carried out internationally.
Meanwhile, the victim's husband tweeted, "Bank representatives should have noticed that something was wrong when dozens of transactions were made so early in the morning. They should have called us before approving the transactions."
