Hyderabad: A link that appears to be from the ministry of finance is going viral on WhatsApp with the claim that the government is giving financial assistance of Rs. 30,628 to select citizens in view of surging prices.
The message reads, "After the surge in prices, the government decided to give the Indian people an amount of ā¹30628 for every citizen who meets the conditions as an aid to the poor class to overcome the crisis (sic)."
This link is fake.
When we clicked the link, we were redirected to a page that carried the name of the ministry of finance and its logo. However, the URL is not authentic; it belongs to the blogging website Blogspot. The real website link of the ministry of finance is https://finmin.nic.in/.
The website asked us to enter our names and share the message on our WhatsApp groups in order to receive the money. It should be noted that this method is commonly used to hack and steal information from phones and laptops by connecting to the user's IP address.
No such provision has been announced by the finance ministry. We found no news reports or official statements by the ministry stating that money will be given to poor people to help overcome the financial crisis.
It is clear that the message and link are a hoax.