Kolkata: The Kolkata Police cyber cell has warned citizens against calls from unknown and suspicious International numbers.
These are being used by cyber crooks who trick receivers into activating call forwarding through Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) codes and then take over their banking and messaging accounts.
During the call or through an SMS, the victim is instructed to dial an USSD code, mostly beginning with ’21’, followed by a mobile number, controlled by the scammer.
The police have advised caution when prompts involving codes starting with ’67’ and ’61’ are made.
The alert was issued jointly with the National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit.
A similar advisory was circulated by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), citing misuse of basic telecom features that can bypass safeguards without internet access.
The police also urged citizens not to dial a USSD code on being told by unknown callers, particularly those starting with 21, 67, or 61.
Users who suspect call forwarding is enabled can cancel it by dialling “##002#”.
