"About three months ago, I got a call early in the morning saying that my delivery was stuck and they (person posing as executive of the courier service) need some information from me to make sure that the delivery belongs to me...The guy on the call said that the parcel delivery is stuck at Taiwan Airport customs because it carried some illegal stuff," Glenissa Pereira, a media professional, told The Quint.

In a Facebook post, one user named Deelip Menezes explained how a scammer tried to dupe them while trying to buy some gym equipment which Menezes advertised on an online market place.

We also came across a peculiar version of the scam in which scammers approach as officers of the armed forces.

There have been a lot of cases on online market places (like OLX, Quikr, Facebook marketplace, etc) where scammers used fake identification cards of uniformed officers to create a small trust value with the victim.

Rakshat Tandon, a cybersecurity expert, told The Quint that these scammers follow a similar pattern.

Scammers often identify themselves as customer care executives and trick people into revealing sensitive information under the guise of offering help and resolving issues. These fake executives ask people to download some third-party screen sharing applications or share malicious links on WhatsApp to dupe people of their money.

This is one of the most popular scams, where fraudsters pose as delivery partners of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart. These fraudsters reach the doorsteps of customers and claim that the order was cash on delivery.

However, when the customers refuse to accept the order, the fraudsters ask for an OTP to "cancel the order." As soon as the customers share the OTP, their accounts are comprised and end up losing money.

The official X account of National Informatics Centre (NIC) had also shared a video to warn users against such scams.

Let's understand how the fraudsters set up their elaborate scams and dupe people. We spoke to Sandeep Kumar Shukla, a Computer Science and Engineering professor of IIT Kanpur, who said that the trap is laid in four stages-

1. Reconnaissance:
It is the first stage where scammers find information about a potential victim, their contact details, and other details. These data can be leaked through various data breaches and details like phone numbers can be found by crawling social media platforms.

2. Weaponisation:
Scammers identify the things a particular person falls for. This process usually entails the fraudsters looking through the person's social media activities and their online presence. The scammers also look at people's buying habits and then approach them through social media or phone calls.

3. Initial access:
The victim receives an offer that is too hard to resist. People usually believe that they are being provided these offers by some store they recently visited, but that is not the case.

4. Execution:
Scammers ask the victim to download some third-party applications or click on a link to avail the offer. This leads to the victim being duped of their money.

As we saw in the case of courier scams, one should remember that no company will directly connect you to a cyber cell official under the pretense of your parcel containing some illegal items.

We should be careful of ordering products from unknown websites, or those platforms that have lower reviews.

Do not be in a hurry to make a purchase or sale, because scammers latch on and benefit from the impulse of the victims.

Professor Shukla too listed out few measures one can undertake to escape the elaborate trap laid by the scammers.

1. Always be on guard and never trust unsolicited calls or texts.
2. Even if you respond, do not reveal anything about yourself such as your profession, financial conditions, and so on.
3. Not to fall for lucrative offers or easy money, because in most cases they won't be genuine.
4. Do not download an application just because the "customer care executive" is instructing you. Always check about the applications before installing them.
5. Be wary of strangers on social media platforms. Do not click on any link sent to you by people whom you don't know.

The Quint contacted Smriti Joshi, Chief Psychologist at Wysa, to understand people's cognitive biases after their decision-making when contacted by scammers.

Joshi said that cognitive biases such as confirmation bias or authority can significantly influence individuals. While confirmation bias can cause people to favour information that confirms their existing beliefs, the authority bias involves a tendency to trust authority figures like police or customer service representatives.