Android users alert! New 'Daam' virus can record your phone calls, hack camera; how to keep yourself safe

The Central government has issued an important advisory to all Android phone and gadget users to keep themselves safe from the ‘Daam’ virus, which can hack your phones and access all your personal information, including photos and phone calls.

National cyber security agency Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-In, alerted all Android users about this new Daam virus, which has the capability of hacking into your call records, camera, and photo gallery, accessing all your personal information.

Further, Android users must note that the ‘Daam’ virus is capable of “bypassing anti-virus programs and deploying ransomware on the targeted devices", according to the CERT advisory. This virus can be contracted through apps or content downloaded through untrustworthy or unverified sources.

The Daam virus can enter Android phones and pass all the security checks with ease, after which it accesses private information like call records, chats, and contents of your gallery. It can also record your phone calls and messages.

According to the CERT advisory, the Daam virus can not just hack phone call records and galleries, it can also change your phone passwords. The virus can also take screenshots, send SMS and download/upload files, among other actions.

The CERT-In advisory about Daam said, “Once it is placed in the device, the malware tries to bypass the security check of the device and after a successful attempt, it attempts to steal sensitive data, and permissions such as reading history and bookmarks, killing background processing, and reading call logs etc.”

To keep yourself safe from this ‘Daam’ virus, one should always avoid suspicious or untrustable links on social media, including SMS and emails. Further, one should also not receive phone calls from suspicious numbers or international numbers that “don’t look like real mobile numbers”.

Bank SMSs should be read carefully so as to not fall for any scam and URLs such as 'bitly' and 'tinyurl' hyperlinks like: "https://bit.ly/" "\nbit.ly" and "tinyurl.com/" should be accessed with caution.

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