Beware! Personalised mails can be scam

BANGALORE: Cyber fraudsters now land up in your inbox as advocates, police officials and friends through emails laced with links to malicious software that can steal your credit cards and bank accounts details.

One of the most successful on-going email scams is the job offer letter claiming to be from the office of the Vasant Kunj, Delhi-based human resources executive at carmaker Maruti Udyog announcing selection to the final round interview. Another one claims to be from a senior advocate based in New Delhi and talks about a case that has been registered against you in a local court.

"These emails are no longer sent by bored teenagers from college basements; most of the scams are pretty well-researched and advanced," said Huzefa Motiwala, regional head at computer security software firm Symantec. "Rise in email scams is directly proportional to the increase in internet penetration in the country, especially with the number of first-time internet users going up each day."

A recent Cisco study found that India is the world's largest source of internet spam, followed by the US, South Korea and China. With over 130 million users, India's internet population is one of the fastest growing in the world, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

According to Ravindra K Gadadi, deputy superintendent of Police at Karnataka police's cyber crime division, hundreds of email scam cases get registered with his department every week. "Until recently, most of these scams originated from Nigeria, making it extremely hard for police to find the actual culprits. But that has changed." He added that the cyber police team in Bangalore recently arrested a person from Andhra Pradesh who was behind an email scam campaign.

In another scam, "e-challan" of 500 for parking illegally, claiming to be from police department, were sent via email. The email offers several links for paying the fine by credit card, internet banking or even physically into an SBI account (No: 30119276964). "The hunt is on for a person based out of Bellari (in Karnataka) who is suspected to be part of a large internet scam," Gadadi added.