Can the bank help you recover the loss? The bitter truth – No

Banks have always been clear about their warnings to customers about not disclosing any personal or banking information over call, SMS, or email no matter what. Hence, in this particular case, the bank holds my the account holder accountable for whatever happened. In short, it would be unwise to expect that the bank will somehow recover the loss.

How to protect yourself from such scams
Criminals are making money because they are smart. They know how to lure their victims into their trap. So, it is up to us how we prevent ourselves from getting trapped.

1. Educate everyone in your family and friend circle about phishing attacks and other such online scams. Most of time, we assume that these incidences cannot happen with us but you never know.

2. Never give out any personal information (including financial) to anyone over a call, SMS, or email. The caller may sound genuine, polite, professional or harmless but that is how scammers are trained – to trick their victims. Remember, banks never call or write to their customers asking for their banking details.

3. If you receive a call from your bank (or anyone pretending to be from a reputed company) asking for your personal or bank details, disconnect the call. Report the number to your bank. If you are using Truecaller app on your phone, tag the number as ‘Fraud’ so that it gets updated in the app’s database and other Truecaller users know about it.

4. If you can identity the number’s operator (Vodafone, Airtel, Idea, etc.), write to them or Tweet them informing about the call. If they are diligent enough, they might blacklist the number from their database.

Also feel free to add your suggestions in the comment segment. As of today, I am still following up with those to whom I had written seeking help in bringing the criminal to justice. And I will keep doing so. I’ll update this post if I come across something positive. For now, I hope this post helps our readers educate their family and friends about such threats and how to avoid them. Stay safe!