Plastic card users fall in a trap in Visakhapatnam district
Senior citizens are falling prey to cyber criminals most of the time
Visakhapatnam: Despite the city police efforts to sensitise citizens about various forms of cyber crime, till date debit card users are giving chances to cyber criminals by writing down the Personnel Identification Number (PIN) of the cards on the backside of the cards in the city.
Majority of victims, who lost their debit cards at various places in the city have lost amounts from their accounts as the cyber criminals use fraudulent transactions and withdraw money from ATM centres by misusing the card by punching the PIN.
Recently a man withdraw Rs 5,000 from an ATM counter in the city and he forgot his ATM card in the counter. After a few minutes he received an SMS alert that '30,000 had been debited from the account. The man had written the PIN of the card on the backside of ATM card to recollect his PIN.
Likewise, many card users are landing in trouble for writing down their PIN on the cards, a senior police officer of Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) said.
Additional deputy commissioner of police (Crimes) S. Varada Raju said in most of the fraudulent debit card transaction cases, the card users only had given clues to culprits. Many kept their debit cards in their wallets and also writing the PIN on the cards, so that the wallet losers turning into victims immediately.
However, on the other hand, authorities of banks say that a person can’t claim the damage from the bank if they fails to immediately block their lost card and money is unauthorisedly withdrawn by using the card.
Without PIN, debit card could not have been used even at Point of Sale (POS), but some card holders, mostly above 45 years age group are giving key to criminals by noting down PIN on the cards.
“We had received several complaints on fraudulent withdrawal of money but many cases were under investigation only,” said inspector of CCIC, K. Satyanarayana Rao.
