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A message says your scholarship is approved, an internship is waiting, or your exam form will be rejected unless you act tonight. Some of these are real; some are phishing. Here is a one-minute check, a worked example, and where to report.
What is a phishing message?
A phishing message is a text, email, WhatsApp chat or call that pretends to come from someone you trust, so that you hand over money, an OTP, a password or your documents. The Department of Telecommunications' Chakshu facility on Sanchar Saathi gives examples of the disguises: bank account, payment wallet and KYC updates, and people posing as government officials. For students, the disguise is often a scholarship, an internship or an exam body.
In 2025, people in India filed 24,02,579 financial fraud complaints on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, reporting ₹22,495 crore in total, according to a Ministry of Home Affairs reply in the Rajya Sabha published by PIB. These cover every kind of financial cyber fraud, not only phishing.
How to identify phishing messages in under a minute?
Run four checks in this order. One failure is enough to stop.
Sender. TRAI's 2025 rules bar ordinary 10-digit numbers for telemarketing; commercial messages come from a registered header, a short name ending in -P (promotional), -S (service), -T (transactional) or -G (government) (PIB release on the TRAI rules). A "scholarship department" texting from a mobile number fails. A correct suffix is not proof on its own, so keep checking.
Link. Read the domain, the part between "https://" and the next "/". The National Testing Agency names www.nta.ac.in and neet.nta.nic.in as its websites in its public notice of 20 July 2026, and the National Scholarship Portal is scholarships.gov.in. Link shorteners, lookalike spellings and extra words in the address fail.
Fee. Filing a National Scholarship Portal application at a Common Service Centre costs a fixed Rs 30 in all, according to the portal's own notice. A "processing", "verification" or "security deposit" fee sent by UPI to a person fails.
Pressure. Deadlines of a few hours, threats ("your candidature will be cancelled"), secrecy ("don't tell anyone") and requests for your OTP fail. Real deadlines also appear on the official website.
Worked example: is this scholarship SMS real?
Here is a made-up message aimed at National Scholarship Portal applicants:
"From +91 98XXXXXXXX: Dear student, your NSP scholarship of Rs 48,000 is approved. Pay Rs 1,250 verification fee within 2 hours at bit.ly/nsp-verify or it will lapse."
Sender: a personal mobile number, not a registered header. Fail.
Link: a shortener, not scholarships.gov.in. Fail.
Fee: Rs 1,250, against the fixed Rs 30 charge for help at a Common Service Centre. Fail.
Pressure: two hours. Fail.
Four out of four. Do not reply and do not click. Screenshot it, report it, and check your status by typing scholarships.gov.in yourself. For polished, AI-written offers, use our five-step check for fake scholarship offers.
What do fake exam-form and internship messages look like?
Exam-form scams copy the look of official notices: "last chance to correct your form", "pay the late fee here", or an offer to supply a "corrected" score card or OMR sheet. NTA's 20 July 2026 notice on NEET (UG) 2026 says every genuine OMR sheet and score card carries verifiable identifiers, such as a barcode or, on the score card, a QR code, that resolve to a single official record. It warns that creating, using or circulating a fabricated one is an offence under the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024, and that NTA may act against anyone who prepares, supplies or brokers one. For genuine doubts, the notice lists NTA's helpline, 011-40759000.
Messages selling a "leaked paper" feed on the same worry; practice is a better use of it: the Fermi Problem Library has worked problems with a step-by-step solver that explains the reasoning, so your revision time goes into solving instead of chasing rumours.
Internship scams often offer work-from-home roles with high pay, then ask for a "registration" or "training kit" fee, or move you on to paid "tasks". Treat any fee to get selected as a fail on check 3. If it has already happened, read what to do when a teen is hit by an online task or job scam.
Where do you report a phishing message in India?
No money lost yet: report the SMS, call or WhatsApp message on Chakshu. The portal asks for reports within 30 days of receiving the message. On WhatsApp, also block and report the chat.
Money already lost: call the toll-free cybercrime helpline 1930 or file at cybercrime.gov.in, as Chakshu advises, then call your bank.
Bank details or an OTP shared: call your bank straight away to block the card or account.
Fake exam-body message: also tell that body through the helpline on its official website.
Our step-by-step guide to reporting cybercrime in India through 1930 and the online portal shows what details to keep ready.
Next time a message says "act now", give it one minute and four checks first.
