Govt warns against fake SMS peddling job offers at NIC

The communications ministry has issued an advisory to the general public warning them against a fake message peddling job offer at the National Informatics Centre (NIC), a government department under the ministry of electronics and information technology. 

 The ministry said in a statement on Friday that fake SMS was misusing NIC’s name, was a cyber incident and could also involve a potential financial fraud, NIC promptly reported the incident to CERT-In, the national nodal agency for responding to computer security incidents. NIC also registered a complaint with law enforcement agencies for identifying and prosecuting the perpetrators of this fake SMS.

 In order to prevent further misuse, Cert-In immediately coordinated with concerned intermediary for the take down of the fraudulent URL, the ministry added.

 “General Public is hereby advised to be cautious of such fake SMS, and report such fraudulent SMS to incident@cert-in.org.in and,” the ministry said while issuing the advisory. 

 NIC received information about a fake SMS with a job offer, masquerading in the name of NIC being circulated amongst the general public. 

 Upon receipt of information about the fake SMS, NIC Team carried out an immediate internal investigation and identified that the fake SMS was not sent from NIC’s infrastructure. 

 NIC team swiftly coordinated with telecom service providers to investigate and identified that the fake SMS had been sent through a private SMS service provider’s infrastructure, the ministry added.

 The event only highlights the growing menace of spam messages that are increasingly becoming difficult to distinguish from real messages, thus leading to higher chances of fraud.