Dangerous design pattern in OTP ecosystem

Ride start Code / Happy Code / Delivery Code / Service Code

Pattern

Awareness about not sharing OTP

This is a tweet to create awareness among public to not share their OTPs.

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Antipattern

Olacabs

This is Olacabs asking to share your OTP to start the ride.

Airtel

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This is Airtel asking to share the happy code with the technician.

Urbanclap

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Another service asking to share code with the professional.

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The Problem

Many of the companies as seen above encourage people to share code with strangers. These codes are harmless and you can share them with the professionals, however these inculcate the notion that it is sometimes okay to share codes with unknown strangers. This is where it goes all wrong. Imagine a layman booking Olacabs and then sharing OTP with the driver and then he receives an OTP from a bank and a phone call asking to share his OTP — it would seem to him that it is a standard process which cannot harm him in any way and few seconds later he has lost lot of money.

Destroying the Pattern

The hard rule should be to not share any OTP/code with anyone but due to these companies listed above and a lot more, they are destroying this pattern making it alright to share some codes.

Rural India is rapidly going online and is completely unaware of such risks. It is now the right time to stop such practices and restore the pattern.

How to fix this problem

Why does Ola need to ask OTP? They feel that drivers will start the trip even without the customers onboard. They can probably use the GPS location of user and the driver to match that they are moving together but using OTPs completely ruin our pattern. Also, why is it the problem only with Ola and not with Uber?

Airtel: Why don’t they just call and ask if it the service was done. Just to save manpower, they are destroying out pattern.

On the one hand people are trying to create awareness to not share OTPs and on the other hand these companies are encouraging to share codes. Victims will be the people who are not tech savvy — that is majority of India coming online.