EPFO warns provident fund account holders of fraud

As the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has started crediting interest to its 6 crore subscribers spread throughout India, provident fund account holders have been warned against a fraud.

Scamsters might call you up posing as EPFO officials and seek personal details like Aadhaar card number, PAN card number or even UAN (Universal Account Number), its password or an OTP to siphon off money from your EPF account. The EPFO has asked subscribers to not share these details with anyone over phone or email as this could lead to fraud.

"EPFO never asks you to share your personal details like Aadhaar, PAN card, UAN or bank details over phone. EPFO never calls any member or subscriber to deposit any amount in any bank. Please do not respond to such fake calls," EPFO says on its website and Twitter handle.

The provident fund body also said they never asks EPF account holders to share their details or deposit any amount in the bank. "Don't disclose your personal information over the phone," EPFO said.

Sharing such details can help a hacker log in to your EPF account and compromise its security. Those who have changed jobs but are yet to transfer their old PF account balance to the new one are usually the targets of such hacking attempts. In the past, there have been cases where PF account holders found that somebody had withdrew money on their behalf several months ago.

Last year, a case in Mumbai had come to the notice of the EPFO where a crook posed as an official of the provident fund body and sought personal details for processing of provident fund withdrawal or updation of KYC status in UAN.

Since then, the EPFO has been taking several steps to strengthen its security system.

To prevent leakage of personal data of members and a subsequent fraud, the UAN-based enquiry system for checking claim settlement status can now be accessed only through the member passbook application on the EPFO website where you have to log in with user id and password to get the status of claim settlement. UAN has also been linked to Aadhaar card.

EPFO is one of the world's largest social security organisations maintaining more than 22.05 crore accounts and 4.65 crores active subscribers.