Mint Quick Edit: Cyber cons go from digital arrests to wedding scams

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Even as people in India come to terms with the idea of a ‘digital arrest’, invented by scamsters acting like law enforcers to scare people out of their money, cybercriminals seem to have expanded their repertoire of tricks to swindle people online.

In a newly identified scam, they send fake wedding invitations via WhatsApp. Those who open these messages to check whose marriage they’re being called upon to celebrate end up with malware installed on their phone, through which sensitive data, such as bank information, gets stolen by the perpetrators.

Several cases of fraud done this way have been reported across states, with some victims losing considerable sums. It’s a particularly pernicious ploy because nobody likes to miss news of weddings, giving such messages a high click-open rate.

For the police, it’s a cat-and-mouse chase, with con artists coining their next scam before their last one has quite been unravelled. And it’s not just the under-educated who’re falling prey to con-men.

With so much digitization around us, even educated folks came to believe that the police had begun to engage citizens online. Sadly, too many Indians seem to inhabit digital bubbles that real news fails to penetrate.