Description

As per the reports, a convincing Twitter scam is targeting bank customers by abusing the quote-tweet feature. A quote tweet is a feature on Twitter that allows users to share someone else's tweet along with their own commentary or additional context. The hacker targets customers tweeting to their banks to raise a complaint or request assistance, but instead of bank, they receive a reply from the scammer through a quote-tweet, making them call the scammer's 'helpline' number. The simplicity and focused targeting of the scam makes it look convincing to unsuspecting users. Earlier this week, a customer tagged Axis Bank in a tweet but received a reply as a 'quote tweet' from an account claiming to be Axis Bank. Although lack of followers on the @AXIS_BANK_oo account and the verification badge did raise red flags, but it is not the first time the company has replied from a separate Twitter account to minimize amplifying complaints from their customers sent as Tweets. However, an Axis Bank official soon stepped in from the legitimate Twitter account and tweeted that the response was not posted by the official representatives and requested people not to share any information and immediately stop any interaction with other profiles. The fake account AXIS_BANK_oo has since been suspended. Moreover, during the analysis of the case, researchers discovered that the same phone number, 89618-44737, had been mentioned in tweets targeting customers of other big banks, including HDFC and ICICI. Merely suspending these accounts may not be the solution, as the scammers simply use various numbers at the end of the Twitter handles and also name the accounts such as "(BankName) cares" to make them appear legitimate.