Students are now reliant on online education. This is due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This time, hackers are looking for new kinds of ways to extract information.

One of these ways is vishing scams.

Now, we have all heard about phishing scams in which viruses are sent through emails. But what are vishing scams?

Vishing refers to voice +phishing which equals vishing. In these kinds of attacks, the students are tricked into divulging their personal information through phone calls. This is done when the vishing caller on the phone acts as an official body and needs information for some official purpose. This information is then applied to withdraw money from the victim’s bank account.

These are the different kinds of vishing scams:

Victim get asked for personal information by a scammer 

The victim might be asked some information by the scammer about the learning platform used by them like Zoom or Google Classroom. The victim will be told that they have been locked out from all these accounts and to sign back in, they need to divulge some personal information. The victims had never lost access to their accounts and whatever information they give like answers to a secret question might be used by the scammer to sign in to their accounts.

Problems regarding payments 

If you have gotten access to a MOOC based platform and somehow scammers know that, they can use such details. They will call the unsuspecting students that there has been some problem. This problem is regarding a student’s payment for this service. They will ask the students to give their financial information like credit card details and hence dupe the students. They can use this information to withdraw money from the account of someone related to the student or the student himself.

Calling on behalf of the university 

The scammers can also call the student. Their main aim is to get some sensitive information from the student. They will claim that they are calling on behalf of the university. When the students reveal any personal information about themselves, they are likely to log in to the student’s account with the university.

Promising a job 

The students can be duped into signing up for fake courses. It’s easy for a student to get duped when someone on the other end of the line will talk about a course which will get them placement upon finishing it. The students are lured into signing for such fake courses especially when they have lost their jobs and are willing to sign up for a course to get a new job.

What are the signs of a vishing scam?

You might have become afraid after learning about these vishing scams. But it’s not true that every other call is a vishing scam. Here are some tell-tale signs in a call that inform you whether its a scam or not:

• Making you panic: The person on the other end of call might be using some scary language to let you know that you will be at a huge loss if you don’t act immediately. For example, you might have lost access to your university account and need to act quickly.
• 
  Asking for personal information: No university will ask you questions about your financial details. So, whenever you get such a call asking such information, its a fraud call.
• No identification information: Such fraud callers won’t let you know who they are. Since they won’t give any information about themselves, its completely true that are not calling on behalf of an official body and are a fraud.

So, this is how you can identify fraud callers i.e. vishing calls and spare yourself from some fraud.