In Short
- HDFC has alerted its customers of a viral phishing scam.
- Many users reported a fake SMS asking them to update PAN or KYC.
- Scammers are sending a link with SMS to trick people and steal their money.
By Divya BhatiFew days back we shared that many HDFC account holders are receiving some fraudulent SMS asking them to update their KYC or PAN. “HDFC Customer your HDFC NET BANKING will be suspended today. Please update your PAN card now visit below the link,” reads the viral fraud SMS received by many HDFC customers. While such fraud SMSes are not new, for some reason, the count of HDFC customers who are getting such messages has surged in the past few days. Even one of the team members in India Today Tech received one such message. While in our report we did share on how to be safe from such a phishing bank SMS scam, we recently came across HDFC customers who in fact took the most hilarious road to deal with this viral phishing scam.
A reddit user with ID u/Global-Letterhead-88 who is a software engineer by profession recently revealed that he also got a similar phishing SMS link on his phone from some who pretended to be from the bank. “Dear Customer Your HDFC Account is disabled, Please click the link to update your PAN Number. Click Link…” reads the SMS he received.
However, after getting the SMS, the techie decided to deal with the scammer in his own way. Taking things further, he replied back to the SMS by saying ” Okay Bhaiya”, and that’s where the reverse UNO game started.
After receiving the reply from the techie, the scammer again reverted to the chat window and tried to convince the techie to click on the link. However, instead of clicking on the link the techie called him out saying he is a software engineer and offered help to him to create a fake HDFC site. Not only that, he even offered a deal of Rs 20,000 in front of scammers to do the work.
Hilariously, the scammer fell for his SMS, and asked techie to reply to him with his work sample on WhatsApp. Scamming the scammer, the techie even replied to him on WhatsApp and sent him a video of another fake website of HDFC Bank, and some other fake screenshots, claiming that he made it.
And guess what? The scammer indeed fell for the words of techie and asked him to have a talk to take things further. However, ending this game the techie ignored him citing his work. But later he did share all the screenshots of this hilarious incident on Reddit with other users.
While some applauded his steps and even advised him to trick the scammer further, many raised concern on increasing cases of phishing scam. Notably, the techie himself also remained cautious and didn’t click on the website link he received on the SMS. And we advise the same to never click on such links and bank never ask for sensitive data over SMS or send links to click on.
Wilmer Bode
Johnnie King
