Recently a message has been going around apparently from EPFO India stating that you could be eligible for EPF benefits worth Rs 80,000! Upon investigating the matter we found out that this was, in fact, a scam! A clever ruse using fake EPF website to lure all your finances into the hands of scammers. In this article, we will explain the important points to watch out for in such dodgy situations.
Table of Contents
Fake EPF website pointers:
As you can see below, the message looks quite official. One can easily get mistaken by the message and click on the link given. Upon clicking on the link, the website asks to fill out the questionnaire given. Once it confirms that you are actually eligible for the EPF benefit, you need to give your bank details. The EPF funds would then be transferred to your account. However, we noticed the following jarring points on the website:
- Government websites in our country end with the domain name .gov.in. Whereas the website URL given in the message is socialdraw.top/epf, something completely different. Thus, we can understand that this website is not genuine.
- The header of the website is an image of the actual EPFO website https://www.epfindia.gov.in. Also, unlike the actual website header, the header for this fake EPF website is not clickable.
- The bottom part of the fake EPF website asks for three questions replete with grammatical mistakes such as ‘did you worked.’ These questions are –
- Are you over 18 years old?
- Did you worked in one of periods between 1990 – 2019?
- Are you currently working somewhere?
- No matter what answers you input in the questionnaire, you are eligible for the fake EPF scheme.
- The website redirects you to multiple fake websites. It promotes IQ Options for Binary Trading, which itself is an ongoing scam.
EPFO’s official statement
The EPFO put up the below tweet on its Twitter handle to acknowledge the fact that this is a fake EPF website trying to scam innocent people.
Along with that it also put up a tweet stating that EPFO would never ask you to share your Aadhaar or bank details over a call. Hence, please do not fall into such traps and share your banking details with anyone.
Previous EPFO scams
- A similar case of EPF fraud was seen when EPFO’s Bandra office published a circular cautioning PF members from divulging their personal bank account and identification details with the EPFO number given on Google. Apparently, Deepak Sharma was duping people of their pension funds by changing the official EPFO Bandra office number to his personal number. He would PF members and ask them for their account details stating that he was an official and then dupe all their PF money. Mumbai Police’s initial investigation revealed that the number was also listed on EPFO’s Just Dial page.
- The EPFO audit report also states that several EPF accounts are showing a negative balance. EPFO officials states that this could be an accounting error. But it is really clear that this is an ongoing EPF scam which has stolen members’ PF funds.
Important pointers to remember to be safe
- Do not trust any WhatsApp messages or forwards.
- Pay attention to the links given. Official government websites always end with gov.in or nic.in.
- The government itself never send out WhatsApp messages or calls individuals regarding joining any schemes.
- Never give your personal details such as bank account, PAN, UAN, Aadhaar, on any website, unless 100% sure of its authenticity.
- Never share your personal details over a phone call with anyone, no matter what they say.
Watch our video on this topic below.
Also read, How To Detect Fake HR Agencies & Avoid Job Frauds.
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