Beware of JioFiber e-mail! It may be a phishing scam

Usually, fraudsters posing as Income Tax official or Bank executive hoodwink unsuspecting citizens to reveal Aadhaar number or bank account number or debit/credit card details and steal their hard-earned money. Now, with official JioFiber (formerly known as GigaFiber) service set for commercial launch on September 5, cybercriminals have found a new opportunity to lure their victims.

It has come to light that hackers are sending emails to random people that their Reliance JioFiber connection request have been approved and they need to share their bank details and other personal-identifiable details for verification before going ahead with the JioFiber router and Set-Top-Box installation.

These cybercriminals seem to be intelligent, as they have created an original-looking letterhead with the company's logo, in this case, Reliance JioFiber, to fool people into believing it to be an authentic e-mail and urge them to reveal their financial details for broadband internet service activation.

One of the telltale sign of a phishing scam is that a fake officer asks for a bank account number or urge the user to share OTP (One-Time-Password) to offer JioFiber service. In reality, telecommunication or any private company or even the government personnel for that matter, are not authorised to seek such details to serve or for the verification process, on a phone or via email.

Must read | What is Phishing? How to safeguard from online fraud

So, if you have applied for JioFiber service, you will be contacted by the officials to ask for house address, so that they could come home to install the router or STB, provided there is high demand for such service road or the apartment complex.

For now, the company is prioritising only such localities and over time, JioFiber service will be extended to other areas. So far, 15 million people have registered for JioFiber and 500,000 users are using the service.

In the Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2019 in August, Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani had said that the company plans to bring JioFiber to 1600 cities and towns in the next 12 months.

Read more | Reliance Jio Fiber: Broadband, TV tariff plans and more

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