Cyber Fraud: Your bank account can be emptied even with your Aadhaar, AePS has become a weapon of scammers... this is how you can protect yourself..

Cybercriminals keep coming up with new ways to empty your bank account every day. Till now, cases of fraud have come to the fore through OTP and links, but for some time now, cases of fraud have also come to the fore through Aadhaar. Scammers are now emptying people's accounts by using AePS (Aadhaar-enabled Payment System) as a weapon.

People have already been alerted in many states regarding cyber fraud through AePS. The government has started the service of AePS for the convenience of the public. It allows users to withdraw money from their bank account using an Aadhaar card and biometrics. If your bank account is linked to Aadhaar and the service of AePS is enabled, then you can withdraw money from the account even without a checkbook or ATM. Know here how scammers commit fraud through AePS and how you can protect your bank account from them.

This is how scammers cheat
To commit cyber fraud through AePS, scammers first steal the biometric information of people from government offices. Land documents contain biometric information about people, it also contains fingerprints of people. They steal fingerprints from these documents for biometric verification. Once this information is in the hands of scammers, it becomes very easy to withdraw money from the account. However, the relief in this is that RBI has set a limit on the withdrawal of money through an AePS service, in such a situation, all the money cannot be withdrawn from the bank account.

What to do for protection
To protect yourself from fraud by scammers, you have to secure your Aadhaar. For this, you have to make a masked Aadhaar card. The complete Aadhaar card number is not visible in the masked Aadhaar card. Apart from this, you can share a Virtual ID (VID) instead of an Aadhaar card number. To generate masked Aadhaar and VID, you can visit the official website of UIDAI. If you have to share your Aadhaar with someone, then share only masked Aadhaar.

AePS is enabled by default for all Aadhaar card holders and biometric data is also unlocked by default, so to protect Aadhaar, you have to disable the AePS service and lock the biometric data of your Aadhaar card. You can do this easily through the official website or mAadhaar app. You can unlock it again if needed.