Pune: The hacking of the WhatsApp account held by NCP (SCP) working president and Baramati MP Supriya Sule is one among many such cases being dealt by the police in the city since the beginning of this year. Last year, Pune Cyber police had alone dealt with 22 complaints of WhatsApp account hacking. The handling of such complaints has now been decentralised to the police station levels.
While there are no concrete figures of the complaints this year so far, the police said they had been handling at least one complaint every day at the police station level, indicating the rise in such crimes. City-based cybercrime investigation expert Sandip Gadiya said, “WhatsApp is one of the easiest and most comfortable applications to use for different purposes, including personal, business and finance. We receive one complaint of WhatsApp being hacked each day.
” He said, “Fraudsters hack the WhatsApp accounts by sending phishing links under the guise of govt agencies. People generally download the application by clicking on the links and end up sharing the OTP generated by the application. OTP is prompted when one has to hand over control of the application to another device.
” Once OTP is shared, the fraudsters gain control of the WhatsApp application. “If the account of a business person is hacked, the fraudster demands money from the accounts department of his/her firm by sending messages with different bank account details,” he said. “WhatsApp can also be hacked using the.