HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE
KATHMANDU: Police have arrested Naresh Lamgade (17), a XII grade student, for counterfeiting the login page of a bank and cheating its depositors.
According to the Metropolitan Police Crime Division, the accused had created a phishing page of Nabil Bank’s e-banking site and drew money from the bank’s various branch offices under the cloak of genuine depositor.
Phishing is an attempt to acquire information such as username, password and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Lamgade of Anarmani-4, Jhapa, was held from the Capital earlier this week.
He has been charged under the Electronic Transaction Act.
Despite repeated warnings from the banks and police appealing the Internet users to be vigilant against ‘counterfeit’ login pages designed in the guise of Nepal-based banks and financial institutions, scammers continue to cheat unsuspecting users.
According to police, cyber criminals are found to be indulging in phishing scams.
With increased Internet use, particularly for the purpose of e-commerce — business agreement, paying and receiving money through Internet — a number of complaints have been lodged with police regarding phishing attacks on their online transactions.
Fraudsters create fake sites and login page of banks to get information on the user name, password, and account number to steal transactions and the intended receiver never receives the paid amount, police said.
Nepali e-banking users have become the targets of phishing scams of late.
The phishing emails under the name of reputed banks warn the recipients that their bank accounts have been suspended due to some security threat.
They ask the recipients to go to a certain link to reactivate the account to obtain all the details of the concerned users.
The personal information thus gathered is used to transfer or withdraw money from the bank accounts and credit cards.
The phishing emails and login pages of banks are found using the same theme colours or shades similar to that of the banks.
Many banks in the Capital including the Nabil Bank had recently published notices in national dailies cautioning customers not to fall prey to such scams after its customers informed the banks about such mails.
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