Category:

Technology

US court shuts down fraud scheme targeting elderly Americans via India-based call centers

The pop-up messages fraudulently claimed that the consumer’s computer was infected by a virus, purported to run a scan of the consumer’s computer, falsely confirmed the presence of a virus and malware, and then provided a toll-free number to call for assistance.

The Justice Department said that when victims called the toll-free number, they were connected to India-based call centers participating in the fraud scheme.

Call center workers asked victims to give them remote access to their computers and told victims that they detected viruses or other malware on their computers.

Eventually, the call center workers would falsely diagnose non-existent problems and ask victims to pay hundreds of dollars for unnecessary services and software.

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Chinese regulators reviewing Ant Group’s equity investments: Report

Reuters reported in early December that Ant was considering selling its 30% stake in Indian digital payment processor Paytm amid tensions between the two Asian neighbors and a toughening competitive landscape.

Paytm and Ant had at that time said the information was incorrect. Ant referred Reuters to its previous statement while Paytm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

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UK insurer sells price comparison unit to Zoopla in $685 million deal

Under the deal, a unit of ZPG Ltd. will acquire Admiral’s Penguin Portals Group, which operates online platforms that help consumers compare the cost of services such as insurance products, mortgages, energy supplies and Internet connections. ZPG, which was bought by U.S. private-equity firm Silver Lake in 2018, will add brands including Confused.com and Rastreator.com to its existing platforms including Zoopla and Uswitch.

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2021 will witness lot of regulatory efforts channelled towards virtual assets: SBI official

” The use of crowdfunding websites, although not entirely new, create an additional risk as these are specially designed to solicit funding and can be misused for terror financing,” he said.

Varma also noted that crypto currencies and its potential means to finance terrorism is a significant threat especially when is anonymous in nature.

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Ransomware 2.0: India and Australia logged the highest number of incidents across APAC region

Vitaly Kamluk, Director of Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) for APAC at Kaspersky, revealed that at least 61 entities from the region were breached by a targeted ransomware group in 2020. India and Australia logged the highest number of incidents across APAC.
Dubbed as “Ransomware 2.0”, this type of attack goes beyond kidnapping a company’s or an organization’s data. These groups are now utilizing the increasingly valued digital reputation to force their preys to pay hefty ransom.

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What skills are Indians learning for 2021

To land lucrative jobs and fit in the drastically changing work environment, 26% of the total students enrolled for programming with Python training, 23% for digital marketing, and 22% students focussed on learning web development. Ethical hacking and machine learning training were also popular among students with 15% and 14% enrolments respectively

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After RBI rap, fintech grouping comes out with code of conduct for industry

The RBI circular cited reports that spoke about excessive rates of interest and additional hidden charges demanded from borrowers, adoption of “unacceptable and high-handed recovery methods” and also misuse of agreements to access data on the mobile phones of the borrowers.
In a statement, FACE, which is formed by EarlySalary, KreditBee, Kissht, CashE, and LoanTap, said maintaining an ethical code of conduct with “larger accountability and transparency is essential for enabling robust financial inclusion in India”.

The code speaks on transparency, disclosure of all costs to customers, pricing and cost of credit, fair treatment, collection, fair treatment, data privacy and resolution of grievances.

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