How to Spot a Fake Government Scheme Website
Fake scheme sites routinely outrank the real ones in search results. They collect your CNIC, your phone number and sometimes a fee, for schemes that are closed, or that never existed. These checks cost you nothing and protect you from nearly all of them.
Follow these steps:
- 1Check the web address ends in .gov.pk. Official Pakistani government sites use this domain. Addresses like scheme-name.com.pk or something.org.pk are not government sites, however official the page looks.
- 2Never pay a fee. BISP states it directly: there is no fee for registration or survey in any BISP scheme, and anyone demanding money in the name of BISP is misleading you. The same is true of provincial schemes — application forms are free.
- 3For anything BISP-related, trust only 8171. It is the only official SMS number. A message from any other number is fraudulent, no matter what it claims. The BISP helpline is 0800-26477.
- 4Be suspicious of a site that says “apply now” for a scheme that was only announced. Many programmes are announced months before any application opens — and some never open at all. If no government portal exists yet, nobody can take your application.
- 5Reach application portals by clicking through the official site, not from a search result or a WhatsApp forward. Some genuine schemes do host forms on non-government domains, which is exactly why lookalike addresses work so well.
- 6Do not enter your CNIC to claim an electricity subsidy from a QR code or link. Pakistan’s Power Division has warned that criminals run fake QR codes and subsidy links using a flow identical to the real one.
- 7Treat payment amounts and instalment dates you see online with caution. Figures circulating for BISP payments, and compensation rates quoted for floods, are frequently out of date or invented. Confirm on the official portal or helpline.
- 8If you have already given your details to a site you now doubt, do not send money, and contact the scheme’s official helpline to check whether an application exists in your name.