My friend lost all his savings to a fraud phone call, this is his story!
One of my friends lives in my ancestral village; he never got a fancy education, lives a simple life and tries to go about his duties one day at a time. Let’s call him Hari Krishan. He received a call, sometime in March claiming his ATM card was blocked, he disconnected. Again after a minute or so received a call from another number and this time the person spoke in an intimidating tone, stating he was his bank’s manager and needed his card details. This time thinking it was genuine, he shared all the details, like card number, CVV and others. A couple of days later he learnt, a total of Rs 30,000/- was deducted from his account in 4-5 transactions. He rushed to the bank and pleaded with the authorities. They turned a deaf ear, well to be fair even they were equally helpless in the matter. The reason being, the only time the banks can defer payments is in the case of credit card transactions.
This information was of no use to Hari and after filing a token FIR; he withdrew whatever cash was left in his account and stopped all banking transactions. Just after demonetization was announced, he chose to stand multiple times at exchange counters for hours at a time to get his cash changed. He never for once stood in the lot smaller deposits line at the bank and made use of his bank account. The man, who is the ideal candidate to achieve technological literacy, went completely off the banking grid. Would he use banks someday? Maybe, maybe not, he has learnt his lesson at a hefty price. Why did he share the details the second time when he was spoken to very sternly by the fraudster? It’s because he belongs to that breed of Indians who even from their childhood are taught to blindly respect authority, obey without asking questions, try never to disobey orders as that might be the only difference between having a good meal and not having one. Was he at fault? Absolutely, there is no excuse for your ignorance even when there’s nobody to teach you.
How could this situation have been avoided? Maybe the banks could have launched an SMS campaign in English and other regional languages specifically warning about the dangers of such calls. Did they do that? I don’t know, they already have a lot of work to take care of, what difference does odd 30K do to a bank that deals in millions. Could the perpetrators have been caught? Theoretically yes, the police had the numbers they could have tracked it and notified the local police station for further action. It’s unlikely the real perpetrators could have been caught as they usually deal with counterfeit documents, but an effort could have been made to assuage people like Hari that someone is looking over their backs.
As we progress towards a less-cash society, apart from the logistics, the digitization needs to win the trust of those whose only concept of money is limited to a piece of paper they can touch and feel. That the same piece of paper when appearing on your mobile screen is as secure as the one in your hand is something they need to be told. Until we figure that out, our transition to universal digitization might remain a distant dream.
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