These days technology is being used everywhere. Everywhere means everywhere, that means technology is being used in crime and scam also. According to researchers at cyber-security firm CloudSEK, a scam campaign based on hotels listed on Google has been discovered in India. These frauds are being run by creating profiles similar to the same hotel using images of hotel rooms that look similar to those listed on Google in different cities across the country, especially pilgrimage cities, with different phone numbers. Upload these images to the reviews section of hotel listings to attract customers. As in customer service phone numbers are written in such a way that optical character recognition (OCR) cannot read them, but humans can.
This scam is not limited to any particular place
Let us tell you that this fraud is not limited to any geographical area, and hotels of all categories are being targeted. However, researchers have observed this practice on a large scale in pilgrimage cities such as Jagannath Puri, Ujjain and Varanasi. The scammers regularly create new Google Accounts and use new phone numbers to keep the scam running. It is not clear how many people are involved in this scam.
This scandal is done with the help of fake customer care number
The impact of the scam campaign is significant. Fake customer care numbers are being misused to lure hotel customers, resulting in financial loss to the victim. The researchers warn that the brand image of hotels is also being affected by the scandal. Truecaller records show that out of 19 fake numbers discovered during the research, about 71 percent of the calls were answered by people who could become victims. On an average, 126 calls were made from each number. The names associated with the numbers scanned on the Truecaller profile do not match with the names associated with their Google accounts.
