Police call for better vigil as e-SIM scams target smartphone users

Noticing an increase in SIM swap scams, the city police have issued a fresh round of alerts to all smartphone users, who are seemingly the soft targets for invisible operators behind e-SIM frauds. Cyber cell officers said that all suspicious calls made in the name of customer care executives requesting to upgrade existing SIM cards should be rejected as a primary step to safety amid rising number of phone number hijacking cases and related bank account hacking. The moment one exchanged the QR code with them, the operation became a success, and they took control of the newly created e-SIM to retrieve all related banking information,” said a senior police officer with the Kerala Police Cyberdome. According to cyber cell officers, the intelligent practice is to reject all unfamiliar social media calls and to avoid recklessly exchanging confidential information and data with unknown people.