Want refund from Zomato on canceled order? DON'T CALL! You may lose money

Online shopping is a common phenomenon now. However, while doing e-shopping, one needs to be very, very careful. Even the slightest of carelessness may lead you to lose your hard-earned money! This happened just days ago to a Bengaluru-based woman. She ordered some food items on Zomato and then canceled her order. She wanted a refund and for that she tried to find out the customer care number of Zomato but she couldn't find any such number on the official website of Zomato. Then she tried to find it via Google search and she found this number - 9134425406. The lady called on the number and the person there talked to her in an official manner and promised that she would get her money refund, but she will have to go to Google Pay first. The customer care number that she called asked her to download some mobile application to get her refund. However, to her surprise, rather getting her refund, the lady lost her Rs 17,286 from her bank account. Fraudsters used the app to take control of other people's devices and find secret data. However, this happens only if the user provides various permissions and information that should never be given to any stranger.
 
Speaking on the incident Pawan Duggal, a New Delhi-based cyber crime expert said, "The Bengaluru lady came across malware attack. In this kind of phishing attack, bank frauds are executed by asking the victim to download a mobile app and once the victim downloads such app, entire personal data of the victim become available to the fraudsters. After getting the personal data of the victim, the fraudsters do multiple cloning of the debit and credit card and fish out entire money from your bank account." 

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Duggal said that fraudsters even hack the victim's mobile number and do online money transfer from the victim's bank account by receiving the OTP on their mobile number without any information to the victim.

After the incident came into the knowledge of Zomato, the food aggregator filed a police complaint last month. While responding to the Zee Business Online query about the incident Zomato said, "Zomato constantly reminds users that chat and email are our first channels of care. We never ever request users to share their personal/bank account details. For all their queries, they can reach out to us via email (help@zomato.com) or the chat support on the app. We are also sharing similar messages with our all users via our different channels of communication and are soon going to display it on our app as well."

Explaining about the Zomato answer, Duggal added, "An online shopper must know that any of the e-retailer is not entitled to ask for your personal information or to put any app download as precondition while refunding your money." He advised e-shopper to use customer care number available on the official website of the e-retailer or the given mode of communication on its website. 

Notably, to make sure your money is not lost to a scam, Google Search doesn't give authenticated number or contact information. "To avoid such phishing, downloading an anti-malware software on your mobile phone and desktop is advisable and the software is available free of cost," said Duggal.