Careful what you click
They have no degrees. Some of them have not even completed primary education. Yet, they learnt how to trick Facebook users into giving them their social media IDs and passwords.
Watching YouTube videos, they learnt to make "phishing links". They send the links to unsuspecting users making it appear as though it was sent by a friend.
The links usually look like invitations to contests and when one clicks on them, a pop-up appears asking the user to login again. The moment the user does that, their data has gone to the hackers.
The hackers, now in control of the users' social media account, blackmail them and extort money from them.
Cyber and Special Crime Division of police's Detective Branch (DB) has disclosed the technique following the arrest of three suspects from Shibchar, Madaripur on September 29.
The arrestees are Obaidur Rahman Nobel, 20, Shamim Sarder, 21, and Sajib Khalifa, 21.
Nobel is a seller of women's purse. He studied up to SSC. Shamim is an electrician and he has studied up to class-IV. Sajib is a tailor and he studied up to class-III, said police.
Over the last two years, the three managed to hack around 2,000 Facebook users, Junaed Alam Sharker, additional deputy commissioner of cyber and special crime division of DB, told The Daily Star.
The ADC said that after taking control of an account, the hackers go through messages and personal address book details. They exploit their victims using personal pictures or videos found in their accounts.
ADC Junaed said the arrestees used to take Tk 500 to Tk 30,000 from their victims.
This corresponded talked to two girls who had paid the group Tk 4,000 and Tk 5,000.
"I had to pay as the hackers threatened to make my photos public," said one of them.
Hearing the arrest of the three, the girls visited the cyber and special crime division and found that their contents were still in the suspects' phones.
The hackers used to send voice message to their victims during ransom negotiations.
The Daily Star collected some of these clips. In one of them, the suspects were heard saying, "Pay the money or else you will be in danger. It is about your life."
Muhammad Shariful Islam, deputy commissioner of DB's Cyber and Special Crime Division, told The Daily Star that Rajoir and Shibchar areas of Madaripur and Bhanga area of Faridpur have turned into a "safe heaven" of these hackers.
"We have arrested around 200 people in last one and half years from these areas," he said.
DC Shariful said frauds like the trio had been active in the region for quite a while. They used to trick people over mobile financial services before and posed as "fixers" of all problems.
Due to enhanced security in MFS, they tricksters had to be move to other methods
DB police suggested not clicking any unknown URL, not giving personal IDs or passwords in any unknown portal, activating two-factor authentication, and not keeping sensitive photos and videos on social media.
Comments