Mr Gaurav Sharan's offer to redesign the fake website intrigued the scammer (representational).
A Gurugram-based software engineer turned the tables on a cyber scammer who had attempted to trick him into updating his PAN details through a fraudulent link on behalf of the HDFC bank.
Instead of falling victim to the scam, Mr Gaurav Sharan, a cybersecurity analyst, responded to the scammer with an offer to redesign the scammer's fake website for Rs 20,000.
Mr Sharan shared screenshots of this conversation on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), with the caption: "Lesson: Never mess with a developer."
When the scammer, posing as an HDFC Bank representative, asked Mr Sharan to open a link and update his PAN number, he cleverly replied, "Easy to find it is a scamming website. I am a software engineer, I can help you redesign the page. For 20K, I will help you redesign exactly like the HDFC net banking site."
Mr Sharan's offer to redesign the fake website intrigued the scammer and he requested a sample of the redesigned site via WhatsApp.
The tweet of the conversation has gone viral on social media amassing over 86000 views already with people using hashtags such as "Scam the Scanner" on the post.