With the world progressing towards AI and robots and the boundaries between real and digital blurring more and more each day, people are exposed to scams and fraud daily.
In a video going viral on Instagram, a man has exposed a new credit card scam at petrol pumps that could empty your bank accounts overnight. “Please do not use your credit card to make payments at the petrol station, and I’ll tell you exactly why”, begins the man. He shared the anecdote of an Indian man who was travelling intercity and stopped at a petrol pump to get his car refuelled. While paying for the fuel, he swiped his card and put it in the right pin, but the transaction was declined. He repeated the process once again with no positive result. The third time, the payment was successful.
But a few weeks later, he realised that his card had been charged over one lakh rupees. When he got the matter investigated, it was revealed that when he tried to pay at the petrol station, his card was skimmed or duplicated and thus, with the pin being known, the perpetrators were able to steal the money from his account.
In the caption, the man named Sarthak Ahuja, who goes on Instagram by the handle casarthakahuja and boasts a following of over 2.1M people, also suggested some ways to protect yourself from such scams, which are rising rapidly in India. He suggested using touchless methods of payment such as UPI or tap. Next, he advised that this scam is happening in various places, and thus, anywhere you can not pay with your card, wait for a notification on your phone saying the transaction has been declined before swiping your card again. This will help you be aware if your card is being cloned. Lastly, disable international payments on your card while in India, as most of these transactions are carried out in international locations.
The shocking video has gone viral on social media with over 2.4M views and 63.1K likes. Many commented on how UPI was the best form of payment everywhere, and others noted similar scams having happened with people they know. “Happened with one of my friends too,” commented one user; “This is an old scam making a comeback with digital awareness,” added another. Many social media users suggested their own forms of protection, such as keeping a separate card for petrol payments with a particular minimum spend, keeping a spending limit on all cards and using cash all the time.
