The annual day function of a college in North 24-Parganas, barely 10km from the Indo-Bangladesh border, turned into a cyber awareness programme where police and bank officials shared tips on the safe use of social media platforms and on protecting themselves from online frauds.
The programme was held at Dr BR Ambedkar Satabarshiki Mahavidyalaya in Bagdah, North 24-Parganas, around 100 km from Kolkata, on Tuesday.
The Telegraph spoke to several students, teachers, police officers and bank officials who attended the programme.
"Till now I was under the impression that one needs to hack a Facebook account to commit an online fraud. But during the programme I learned that fraudsters simply copy photographs from a genuine profile and use them to create a fake profile," said Sarif Dafader, a fourth-semester student of political science at the college.
Police officers and bank officials who were present at the event said that impersonation on Facebook has become a dangerous trend in which fraudsters use personal details and photographs of a genuine profile holder to create a fake profile to dupe others.
"We were told that the only way to secure our account on Facebook was to keep it locked. This way, we are blocking strangers from accessing our friend list, personal photographs and other details," said Dafader.
Police said many cases are reported where the fake Facebook profile of a person has been used to borrow money from people on the friend list of the real account, citing a medical emergency. Often people fall prey to such tricks thinking their "friend" is in need.
Another student, Sudipta Sikder, a first-semester student of political science, said they were told during the programme that it is not "safe" to verify the identity of an unknown caller through apps that display the name of the caller. "I did not know about how the database of such apps is created. They don't provide a full-proof method to identify a stranger," she said.
Superintendent of Police, Bongaon Police district, Joyeeta Basu, along with officers of the cyber cell, were present at the programme.
The zonal head of the investigation wing of ICICI Bank who was present at the event said it has been noticed that fraudsters were targeting youth for letting out their bank accounts for carrying out fraudulent activities.
"We have come across many such cases where the bank accounts of people living close to the international border were being used as mule accounts (a mule account is set up using a stolen identity which is used to transfer illicit funds to other accounts.) for high-value transactions. These people who rent out their accounts in lieu of a small amount of money, do not even realise that their accounts are being used for carrying out fraud and how unknowingly they were becoming a part of a larger racket," said the bank official.
The college principal Chittaranjan Das and vice-principal Roopleena Banerjee said many of their students have fallen prey to cyber fraud and hence there was a need for creating awareness among students.