Mobile financial services bKash and Nagad have warned people of not being cheated by a widely circulated post on social media which claimed the President of Bangladesh was giving gift worth Tk 5,000 to tackle the pandemic situation.
One Reza Mahmud posted first posted the scam on Facebook and it later went viral.
The post embedded with a malicious link said, “Ordinary people are in a financial trouble due to the corona situation. Considering the problems of the common people, the government has announced a grant of Tk 5,000 to all the people of the country. Cash out charge free. I just got Tk 5,000 on my bKash number. Like me, you can easily take this money. If you enter the link below and give it to your bKash or Nagad account number, the money will go to your number immediately. No PIN number is required.”
Once clicked, such type of malicious links enables hackers to penetrate through the device firewall and take confidential user information such as photos, contacts and other important data.
Shamsuddin Dalim, public relations head of corporate communications at bKash said, “This is a scam. Any such announcement either from the government or organisations like us would come on national media not on social media by any individual. In this pandemic situation, we are noticing many such scams. We are issuing cautions to our consumers against such scams.”
Muhammad Zahedul Islam, head of public communication at Nagad, said, “It is an act of fraudulence. There is no such initiative right this moment and we have no engagement with such scams.”
