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A Society Willing to Be Conned

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Submitted By mksanjeev
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Is there a market waiting to be conned?
Most of you must have received messages like “A billionaire has passed away in London & has left behind his fortune worth billions of dollars in your name” or “your mobile number has won an award worth billions”. The next step in the well conceived fraud is a request to pay an amount to claim the fortune or pass on your bank account details to deposit the willed amount. You must have ignored these messages and moved on, but the truth is that a sizeable population, even well educated ones, respond to these messages and fall prey to the fraud. In a recent incident in my office one of my colleagues holding a managerial position has received a call purportedly from his bank. The caller has asked for certain details, on the pre-text of upgrading his debit card, like his account details, date of birth & the information sought was promptly provided. The caller then moved on to ask the pin number of his existing debit card which the person almost gave away, but for a sudden thought which sent shivers down his spine, that this a spam call. There was also an incident in Mumbai where, a director of a company in the middle of a meeting started getting a series of SMS alerts from his bank that so & so amounts are withdrawn from his bank account. Before he could react around one crore rupee was withdrawn from his account. Up on calling the bank he was asked to go to the police since the bank could not ascertain the veracity of the complaint. Probably the person must have inadvertently shared his bank details with a stranger.
What make people respond to these messages? How people can be so gullible, cutting across class? We are not entirely rational creatures. Many of our actions defy logic. With online retailing poised for the next big leap, more and more swindlers are expected to enter the market. The biggest disadvantage of

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