One phone call can clear your entire demat account. Know here how you can stymie it

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If you have invested in the stock market, then be careful. Cyber criminals are now targeting your demat account. Your hard earned money will be wiped off due to one slightest mistake. One  phone call can clear your entire demat account.

They are already keeping vigil on bank accounts, cyber criminals are also targeting your demat account.  Forget common people, even IT experts are  falling prey to such frauds. These thugs are so clever that they are making people paupers in the blink of an eye.

As per the rules, after you have sold your shares from the demat account, the money should be credited to the account associated with it. Similarly, shares should be bought from money kept in the demat account. But cyber thugs are making their well-educated people their victims by all kinds of tricks.

Arun Mantri, founder of Minister Finmart, says that your demat account is the target of cyber thugs. They are looting a lot of people. In case of robbery, criminals attack from the front. But Cyber thugs attack you from behind.  After carrying out virtual robbery they cannot be traced again.

In the today’s age of technology, they hack your demat account with just one click. Sell all the shares in your portfolio in a matter of seconds. Through the slightest mistake of the demat account holder, they easily extract all kinds of information.

In fact, by getting a call from a web based calling app like Anycaller, it may seem to you that your broker has called you. whereas in reality, he is a hacker. Just like the broker has all information of your personal data and your portfolio.  Similarly the hacker also tries to take you into confidence by telling you your information to win your trust.

They will verify your personal details and then ask if you would like to change anything. If you say yes then they would ask you for OTP. As soon as you share the OTP,  money from your  account will be siphoned off. In the meantime, if you do not share the OTP, the hacker will not leave you easily. After this, he will try to implicate you in some way or the other and bluff  that he is asking it for KYC purpose.

The hacker would also try to brainwash the account holder. By the time you understand something is not right,it would be too late. You would feel that this conspiracy was done by the broker, while you won’t be able to prove this in the investigation. Arun Mantri says that caution is the biggest weapon to avoid online fraud.  Never keep your shares in the broker’s pool account. Whenever you buy stocks, keep them in your demat account. Never share OTP with anyone. If you do not share OTP, then the chances of cheating is very less. If OTP is shared then it is difficult to avoid being robbed. If you have a non-essential demat account, then close it in time, otherwise it can be misused.

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