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Cyber thieves are sending e-challans messages to many people. People get trapped by clicking on the link out of fear of receiving a notice from the court. There has been a significant increase in such fraud cases in recent times. The police and government have issued advisories for people in view of such increasing cases of fraud.

So first let’s find out how fraudsters commit such frauds? Cyber scammers send people text messages that look like e-challan alerts. The message contains a random challan number and a payment link. As soon as you click on it, your phone’s security gets compromised. Hackers gain access to your credit/debit card details and then withdraw money from your account.

Now let’s try and understand how we can avoid falling prey to such types of frauds. Cybersecurity experts say that people need to be cautious. If people exercise a little caution, they can differentiate between real and fake messages. The real challan message includes the engine number, chassis number, Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), and other information of the vehicle. If this information is not included in the challan message, then, it is fake.

In addition, if you look carefully at the payment link, you can also tell the difference between real and fake one. The link provided for payment in a real e-challan message is like this – “echallan.parivahan.gov.in/”. But the link given by scammers looks somewhat similar, but if you look carefully, you can make out the difference. Because it could be something like this – “echallan.parivahan.in/”. Here, if you read carefully, you can see that the link of the real challan message ends with gov.in. While this is missing in the link given in the fake message.

What should you do when you get a challan message?

Whenever you receive a challan message, go to the official website and check if a challan has actually been issued. Go to the Parivahan website – which is echallan.parivahan.gov.in. Download the challan from there. All challans are available on the Parivahan website. So cross-check. Also, e-challan alerts are never sent from personal mobile numbers. If you get a message from a personal number, then it is a fake one. If you keep these things in mind, you will be able to avoid such types of frauds. Now you can also share this information with your friends and acquaintances. Keep watching Money9 for more such information and news.