Chennai: Tamil Nadu Police are on a crackdown against loan apps with the state Director General of Police, C. Sylendra Kumar calling upon people not to fall prey to the loan apps.
The decision was taken following several complaints of people committing suicide after loan app defaults and the morphed photographs of the defaulters being uploaded and sent to their contacts.
According to the police, the department is taking up a campaign against loan apps and making people aware against taking even small loan amounts from such apps.
Sources in the police told IANS that most of these apps are of Chinese origin and are taking huge money from the state. Tamil Nadu Police cyber cell have also commenced cracking down on these apps and to get details on how these apps function.
The DGP has also directed people not to download the loan apps and the police have taken up the matter with Google Play Store. With intensive follow up, they could pursue Google to remove around 211 loan apps that were fraudulent.
However people are downloading these loan apps from various websites also and the police have called up people not to download any app from websites that were unverified.
In many such fraudulent websites, scamsters are using the Display Pictures (dp) of senior officers to impersonate and send messages to people working in various offices requesting them to click links of small gifts. Police have requested people to verify the phone numbers of the senior officers before clicking on such links.
A scam called ‘Sextortion’ is popular and in this scam the victim receives a video call from an unknown number. Once the person accepts the call the scamster on the other end, mostly women, strips and later the screenshots of this video call is used to blackmail the victims. Police have cautioned people not to fall prey to calls from such unknown persons or numbers.
Police have informed people to immediately call the police helpline number 1930. This number by the police Cyber Crime Wing Headquarters and police commence freezing of the fraudulent transactions. This measure will help the money to be returned to the victim. According to police, the earlier people report to the helpline, the stronger will be the chances of getting the money back.
IANS