Chinese Hackers Lure Indian Users Into Phoney Tata Motors Scam On WhatsApp

NEW DELHI: Have you, like several others, received a WhatsApp text saying, “Free gift with Tata Motors Cars”? Cyber-security researchers at CyberPeace Foundation in India announced the discovery of a malicious free gift campaign posing as a Tata Motors offer that is gathering customers’ data, and the campaign has been linked to Chinese hackers. The message was circulated via WhatsApp to different people.

The message states that you can win a free gift or a Tata Safari asks users to participate in a quick survey. However, this message had no substantial meaning and it was spread to collect browser and system information as well as the cookie data from the users by the hackers.

The message was pretended to be from Tata Motors, but it was conducted from a third party domain instead of the official site of Tata Motors.

The prizes and gifts were extremely alluring for the common people. Also at the bottom of the page, a Facebook comment box was displayed wherein comments from various people were put up. The comments included, wow, wonderful gifts, and how they offer is extremely beneficial.

The page also showed a blue safari’s picture making it look authentic. Every user was given 3 trials and after these, he or she was sent a message saying, “Congratulations, You did it! You won the Tata Safari!”

After this, the users are asked to click the OK button which further asks the user to share the campaign with friends and family on WhatsApp. Then the person is redirected to certain advertisement sites.

The researchers stated that during the phases of investigation, they identified a domain name that was requested in the background and traced it to China. They said that the hackers must have chosen Tata Motors because of its popularity in the country.

Steps to stay safe from such scams:

1. Never trust such dubious websites.

2. Never open unauthorised sites.

3. Don’t fill unauthentic forms giving out your personal information.

4. Never open suspicious emails or messages.

5. Do not trust forwarded messages which promise alluring gifts to you. These are the basic steps that you can follow to keep yourselves safe in the big bad digital world of scams. These sites try to take out your personal information by giving you forms to fill and also save your browsing information when you open them. Along with the foundation, the 420.in also sends out an honest appeal for people to avoid opening such messages sent via any social media platform.

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