OYO, Zomato and Other Unicorns Come Together To Fight Online Fraud

In the face of increasing online frauds leading to financial losses, Indian tech giants have decided to come together to address the issue and save customers from such cybercrimes.

A TOI report, citing people aware of the development, said that the companies who have taken cognizance of the issue are MakeMyTrip, OYO, Paytm, Swiggy, Zomato, and Uber. Last week, the companies together met the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) representatives and made a joint representation on the issue. The presentation also addressed the plan on how to curb these online frauds, which are reportedly engineered via fake toll-free numbers and serial bank account generators.

These companies also shared a database of about 4,000 SIM card numbers and 350-400 bank account numbers with the RBI, State Bank of India (SBI) and the telecom companies. The tech giants have also reached out to Google about how its search engine is used by cybercriminals to make their fake toll-free numbers appear on top of search results.

The companies have also met senior officials of SBI, Airtel and other stakeholders. Going forward, more online firms are expected to join the group to share their fraud data to counter such online frauds.

“While we are taking all necessary steps to educate our customers and spread awareness about these phishing attempts this fraud can only be contained with pro-active support, viz timely detection, suspension of accounts and expeditious action by telecom companies, banks, social media platforms and search engines,” said a spokesperson of MakeMyTrip group.

Talking to Inc42, Ramaswamy Venkatachalam, Managing Director – Banking and Payments, FIS said, “In the current digital banking landscape, there is serious need for continued emphasis on innovation, cyber security and customer protection. A strong regulatory framework, infallible security measures to enable confidence and trust, an effective customer redressal framework and ease of use can help guarantee secured digital transactions.”

In May, India was reported as the second most cyberattacks affected country, between 2016 to 2018. The average cost for a data breach in India has risen 7.9% since 2017, with the average cost per breached record amounting to INR 4,552 ($64). The RBI too recorded a total of 2,059 cases of cyber fraud in 2017-18 as compared to 1,372 cyber fraud cases in 2016-17.

In August, the RBI said it will create a central registry to monitor digital payments related frauds. This tracking would enable the central bank to keep an eye on such frauds on a real-time basis to improve consumer confidence in the digital channel. This registry will also improve monitoring standards and analysis of the fraud and help RBI collate periodic data for customer awareness.

Recently, Twitter introduced a new financial scam policy. It says that users “may not use Twitter’s services to deceive others into sending you money or personal financial information via scam tactics, phishing, or otherwise fraudulent or deceptive methods.”

As the government and tech giants come together to address the issues of cyber attacks, customer participation continues to be a key requirement.