There have been several cases of late, where Facebook accounts of unsuspecting users have got hacked by miscreants and their friends or relatives prompted to pay up, citing some emergency.
Four people, including three homemakers, have reported that they have been victims of this gang. Jamnagar cybercrime has arrested two persons, identified as Viren Ganatra and Hardik Chohan, both residents of Rajkot. Three more accused are at large. Police believe that the number of victims could rise and they could be from other districts too.
According to police, the accused hacked the Facebook accounts of persons who maintained weak passwords. Many people, especially those who do not have knowledge of cyberbullying, use weak passwords like their mobile numbers or a combination of mobile numbers and birthdates.
The cybercriminals manage to get the personal details of such people as they try out a number of combinations of these details to create passwords of FB accounts. Once they access an account, they would go through the friends’ list of that person and zero in on vulnerable people like housewives of people above 45 years of age in good positions to extort from them feigning to the actual user.
They would use the hacked account to send a chat message, saying, “My account is hacked, I need OTP from five of my FB friends to get access to my account.”
When the person with whom they are chatting agrees to send the OTP, they reset the password of that person’s account. Thereafter, they would use that person’s account and send messages to that person’s FB friends to request for money.
Jamnagar cybercrime police said the hackers denied access of the facebook account to the original user without getting the money from the friends/relatives of that user, citing emergencies like hospitalisation.
Jamnagar police are contacting their counterparts in other districts to get into the root of the nexus as they believe more people have been duped by the gang.
Police also suggest users to create strong passwords to protect their account from easy access to hackers.
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