Scammers target Indians navigating digital welfare system

Internet use in rural India is rising; groups with low smartphone literacy targetted; access to online welfare schemes used as lure

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A man posing as a government official arrived in Fatima Bi's village in India three years ago and told her she was eligible for a subsidised cooking cylinder, but since she could not sign, he said she had to apply using her thumbprint.

Bi is one of millions of Indians who access their bank accounts with biometric data, but did not suspect when the man asked her to press her thumb onto a device. The man had already entered Bi's bank details into the system and used her thumbprint to clean out her account.

"Each time I pressed, he said the machine wasn't detecting it," recalled Bi, who asked for her name to be changed.

She ended up pressing her thumb eight times. After he left, she checked her phone and saw her account had been drained of some 24,000 Indian rupees ($275) in eight transactions.