Loan frauds: Learn How You Can Protect Yourself and Your Money from Scammers

It may not be a common thing that you hear around but loan frauds do happen and have made several people suffer. Recently, many such loan fraud cases have been reported by a number of individuals in which a loan has been taken under their name even without their knowledge. The loan which these people never took hampered their credit score more than enough. Media reports suggest that fraudsters and scammers are using PAN details of individuals to take personal loans. Do you need to worry? Well, not as such! But you should remain vigilant and safe from such frauds. How? We will discuss the same here.

What is Loan Fraud?

Loan fraud is a scam wherein a criminal utilizes your identity to wrongfully acquire a loan. Furthermore, assuming somebody has a credit extension and a scammer draws funds from that line, that likewise falls under loan fraud.

Loan fraud requires your personal information hence it is considered as a type of identity theft.

How to Keep Yourself Safe from Loan Frauds?

Make a habit of checking your Credit Score regularly

The first and foremost thing to do is obviously checking your credit report regularly. Your credit report contains all the past and present details of your credit. The credit card you are using, any ongoing loan, an approved credit line, and all the closed loan accounts are shown in your credit report. Follow the following steps to keep yourself safe -

• If any loan or credit card has been taken under your name, you will get to know that from the credit report. 
• Check for the ones that are not applied by you but still showing in the report. 
• If you find any discrepancies, immediately report the same to all the major credit bureaus and the lending institution through which the loan has been taken. 
• Lodge a police complaint as well to remain on the safe side. 
• Doing this will save you from suffering major losses. Keep in mind that it’s not only about money, a loan taken under your name will also affect your credit score.

Use only trusted and secured platforms

Fraudsters can go to any extent to get your personal details. They can even track your browsing activities and inputs like your login credentials. However, being just a bit cautious is enough to keep frauds at bay. What can be done?

• Visit only trusted websites that you know and are well-known in the public domain. People often provide their personal details on websites that are made clones of the website of a popular company. This happens when one is under an urgent requirement of cash and is ready to provide any details just in order to get the money as soon as possible. Fraudsters know this impatience among people and leverage the same for their own benefit. Make sure that the website you are visiting and submitting your personal details starts with ‘https’. If the website has only ‘https’ at the start of its address, refrain from divulging any sensitive information.
• There are more than 600 illegal lenders operating in India. Hence, you should always double-check everything before submitting any detail. Always check for ISO certification on the website, and if not present, close the page immediately.

Don’t share your sensitive information

It’s not only about any website but you should also not share your sensitive information with anyone. Your ATM PIN, Credit Card details, Aadhar number, or PAN, all can be misused against you without your knowledge. Hence, it is better neither to share such details nor to store the same anywhere. 

Learn to remain safe from phishing attacks

“Sir you have won Rs 1 crore in our lottery, please share your phone number and PAN with us to get the money” You must have got a call like this atleast once in your life. Well, such are classic examples of phishing. 

So basically Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending messages implying to be from trustworthy organizations to prompt people to uncover individual data, for example, passwords and Visa numbers.

Scammers try different ways to get your personal details. It can be a phone call, an online ad, etc. Try to identify such frauds and don’t fall for them. Such calls, instead of making people rich, make them bankrupt!

‘Precaution is better than cure’ and when it comes to the finance world, cure can be pretty expensive. Recovering lost money from scammers is not the thing that quite happens but scams are common. Hence, it is better to remain safe in the very first place and keep these frauds far away from reaching you.

Use Only Verified Apps

Applications give simple and basic admittance to a variety of loan services. Along these lines, they are utilized generally. Yet, not all applications are dependable, and there are numerous unconfirmed applications on the web. You should use only verified loan apps, if not, you might be the following target for loan fraud.