In response to an article published on Scroll.in on Thursday about several reports of Aadhaar fraud, the office of Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad has appealed to the citizens to avoid sharing their personal and financial information on phone.

Since March, cases about money siphoned off bank accounts using a Unified Payment Interface-supported application linked to Aadhaar have been reported in Delhi and the neighbouring township of Noida. The UPI is a system that allows users in India to transact across 30 banks using their smartphones.

Quoting the report, the minister’s office on Twitter said, “People who are less digitally savvy and end up giving confidential information away on a phone call,” were the likely victims of the scam.

“There is a need for the people to be more aware about safety in using financial transactions,” the minister’s office said. “Never share personal information on phone.”

Kislay Chaudhary, a cyber security consultant to several government agencies and police departments in India, told Scroll.in that the modus operandi of the scam involves a caller pretending to be a representative of the Unique Identification Authority of India that manages the Aadhaar database. The caller tricks people to disclose their Aadhaar details, and then using the UPI-supported application, initiates banking transactions, Chaudhary said.