All of us at least ones got that phone call telling us we won the lottery of million dollars but when we try to get that so-called winning money they told us to give them our bank detail and that is what we called Vishing in technical terms.
The word vishing made up of two terms voice and phishing. Phishing is the word used mostly by cybersecurity professionals, meaning trying to get sensitive information about one’s bank account, credit card number, etc. through emails, dummy websites, or any other electronic communication.
So the word Vishing means trying to get someone’s personal information through the voice that is through phone calls.
Vishing is not any new method use by the fraudulent people it was around since the early start of the internet and digital world.
So how exactly is Vishing done?
Let’s understand the example.
Say you are the account holder of Bank of India. You work in the sales industry so you don’t have the fixed salary you get a commission on the product you sell. The commission gets directly deposited into your bank account.
One day after the sale, you get a call saying that money cannot be deposited in your account as your account has been compromised. As you heard it, you started to panic and asked the person on the other side of the phone what you can do to solve the problem.
The person on the other side said with the calming voice you don’t have to worry about it, the bank will handle everything and protect you from fraud you have to give them your account number, password and IFSC code.
As you were in the panic state without hesitation you give your detail to another person and trust him with it.
After some time, you get the message on your phone that this much amount of money has been withdrawn from your account. And that’s how you become one of the victims of Vishing.
You can understand from the above example that people who did such kind of scam are very good at talking to you out. They speak in such a way that we can never doubt them.
Also Read – 5 Best Ways to Secure Ecommerce or Online Store
How many kinds of Vishing is there?
There are numerous ways people can do Vishing. Some of them are as follows.
Bank frauds
In this kind of fraud, a person tries to get your bank details by saying your bank account is compromised.
Credit card frauds
In this scammer try to get detail of your credit card by saying they can give you an exclusive offer on your credit card.
Tax frauds
A fraud person can call you telling he is from the Income Tax Department and if you don’t file your Income Tax today only, you will need to pay extra charges. And then can tell you to file income tax with a given website. In this way, you will lose the money you put on to file income tax and your bank details.
Lottery/gift fraud
This is the most common type of Vishing fraud done by scammers. They tell you won a big lottery/gift and redeem that gift you need to pay some money as the registration charges.
Now the most important question how to protect ourselves from Vishing?
The first thing you can do to protect yourself from vishing is to be aware of it. Being aware means try to read about the topic if possible and methods used by these scammers.
Whenever you receive a phone call from the numbers that are not recognizable, you try to listen carefully and never respond to it in a rush. If such a phone call asks you for anything first check the facts. Whenever you receive such calls after cutting the call, immediately put that number in the block list so if that person/s calls again your phone automatically cut the call.
Never trust someone who told you that you won a lottery as the chances of winning the lottery are one out of millions or less.
Never trust someone who told you, you won a lottery as the chances of winning the lottery are one out of millions or even less.
To conclude the topic I would say never share any of your detail and that includes login details of different websites with anyone.
