New Delhi, Jan. 7 -- Be alert, as a routine phone call or an innocent delivery update could quietly hand over control of your most sensitive digital information to a fraudster.

An alarming trend is being registered increasingly as the cybercriminals are exploiting the call forwarding feature on mobile phones to secretly reroute incoming calls and critical alerts, such as bank OTPs and authentication codes, to their own numbers.

The trend has prompted a warning from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which says scammers are turning a legitimate telecom function into a powerful tool for financial fraud and account takeovers.

By the time a victim realises something is wrong, verification c...