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The National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit has warned users of a new scam that is growing at a fast pace. The USSD call forwarding scam is being used by scammers to dupe people and take over their bank accounts. The alert related to the same has been issued by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, suggesting how these criminals are misusing basic telecom features to infiltrate security safeguards that too without any kind of internet access. As per the official notification, the scam is based on social engineering and takes advantage of people's unfamiliarity with USSD codes. As explained in the advisory, the cybercriminals relying on this one are pretending to be courier or delivery agents and are connecting with the victims under
the pretext of confirming or rescheduling a parcel delivery. In the call, or maybe via SMS, the victims of this scam are asked to dial a USSD code that, in most cases, starts with 21, followed by a mobile number controlled by the scammers. As soon as the victim dials the code, call forwarding is automatically activated on their smartphone. And as a result, incoming calls from banks, OTP verification systems, and authentication calls from apps like Telegram or WhatsApp are redirected to the contact number of scammers. With this, the scammers can reset passwords, take over bank accounts, reset passwords, and do a lot more. And this scam is pretty difficult to detect because USSD codes function without internet and execute immediately. Due to this, victims may not receive alerts indicating that call forwarding has been activated or anything like that.
