Hyderabad: An advertiser in the ‘Men seeking women’ section on Locanto, an online platform, received a call from a number which flashed as ‘Task Force’ on the Truecaller application, together with the logo of TS Police and an email ID.
The caller inquired about their activities and setting up a meeting to ‘talk business’ and settle for a sum. Following a complaint, Hyderabad police arrested the ‘Task Force officer’, a failed BBA graduate and an aspiring police officer. After failing to become a cop, he resorted to cheat criminals as a pseudo cop.
Police said he was confident that those operating in the grey areas would not cross-check is antecedents.
Task Force DCP P Radhakrishna Rao said the reason cheats used such simple ‘scam hacks’ was because a regular citizen does not think twice as an app like Truecaller shows the field of operation of the caller as ‘police’ or ‘bank’ or ‘hospital’.
In a tech-driven society, crooks get away as people believe in the apps and fail to verify before divulging information, said the official, adding that this specific app was used in several other cons as well.
In May, a man from Madhapur was conned by fraudsters who changed their profile names in the app as banking personnel and siphoned off Rs 43,000 from his account after extracting his OTP information.
Truecaller is not safe at all. Their database is not encrypted, leaving it vulnerable to anyone who can hack in to extract information of the users and their contacts, said a cyber crime official.
“Truecaller, a Swedish based application, uses an outdated WordPress for content management. Your personal data is left open for anyone to access. Anyone can change your name on the app and mislead easily as it provides an ‘edit’ option,” he said.
Last year, the Indian Army issued an advisory for its personnel asking them to delete Truecaller from their phones immediately. The advisory was issued on November 24, 2017, which named the app as a ‘spyware’ and a ‘malicious ware’ and that it should be immediately deleted from the devices. The advisory lists some 40-odd other apps, mostly from China-based companies, that should not be installed by Indian Army personnel and if done so, should be deleted immediately.
In response to reports, a spokesperson from the app stated, "We would like to clarify that we are a Sweden based company. We are not sure why the app is on this list, but we are investigating. Truecaller is not a malware, and all our features are permission based and are disabled by default.”
