DoT issues advisory to consumer to prevent cyber fraud

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has advised consumers not to dial *401# followed by an unknown mobile number as it could lead to cyber fraud.

As per a statement by DoT, citizens should beware of receiving malicious incoming calls.

"This activates unconditional call forwarding received on the mobile of citizens to the unknown mobile number. This allows fraudsters to receive all incoming calls and can be used for fraud," the DoT said in an advisory.

In order to check the growing incidents of online financial fraud, the government has stepped up its efforts.

As per the modus operandi, the scamsters call the subscriber and pretend to be a customer service representative or technical support staff from their respective telecom operator. The fraudster states that either there is a problem with the subscriber's SIM card or there is some issue related to network or service quality, and that they need to dial a specific code to fix the problem, which usually starts with *401#, followed by a mobile number.