The Himachal Pradesh Police on Wednesday advised the citizens not to download apps at anyone’s suggestion on social media as it might lead to theft of personal data.

Deputy Superintendent of Police, Cyber Crime, Narveer Singh Rathore, said the cyber frauds keep on using new techniques to rob innocent citizens of their hard-earned money.

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“In recent times, it has been found out that cybercriminals, after taking a person into confidence, urge him to download Any Desk or Team Viewer or any other app from Google Play Store. Many a time, the system generates a numerical code after installation and the criminals ask a person to share it with him,” he said.

Rathore said sharing of the code results in the cybercriminals feeding the same in their mobile phones or computers which gives these criminals remote access to the victim’s device. After getting the access, the criminal steals data from the victim’s mobile or computer and he is able to make fraud payments using Unified Payment Interface (UPI).

The fraudsters are able to even illegally access other payment apps on the victim’s device resulting in fraud monetary transactions.

“There were several complaints from across the country wherein the fraudsters urged their customers to install Any Desk app and duped them of their hard earned money,” Rathore added.

Rathore urged all the netizens of the state to not install the app and neither provide the code to anyone, otherwise they might fall prey to cyber frauds’ nefarious designs.