CYBER CRIME IN GUJARAT

 CYBER CRIME IN MY CITY (SURAT, GUJARAT)

BY – VATSAL LAKDAWALA

INTRODUCTION

I am a proud resident of the so-called diamond city “SURAT”. It is one of the fastest growing cities . Surat has been selected as one of twenty Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under PM Narendra Modi’s flagship Smart Cities Mission . But with these fast developments the rise in cyber crime has also increased in Surat.

‘Pure cybercrime’ refers to crimes against computers and information systems, where the aim is to gain unauthorized access to a device or deny access to a legitimate user.

Traditional forms of crime have also evolved as criminal organizations turn increasingly to the Internet to facilitate their activities and maximize their profit in the shortest time. These ‘cyber-enabled’ crimes are not necessarily new – such as theft, fraud, illegal gambling, the sale of fake medicines – but they have taken on a new online dimension.

Cybercrime is progressing at an incredibly fast pace, with new trends constantly emerging. Police must therefore keep pace with new technologies, to understand the possibilities they create for criminals and how they can be used as tools for fighting cybercrime.

CYBER CRIME POLICE STATION

The city of Surat has got a new cybercrime police station on 7^th of July 2018. The new facility created  on Athwa lines road in place of old police headquarters was inaugurated by police commissioner Satish sharma. The police station will directly function under ACP  of Crime branch . The police station is equipped with specialized software to keep watch on social media.

It will deal with cyber crimes such as hacking , online cheating , social media related issues , offences under IT act and more .

STATISTICS OF SPIKE IN CASES

As per the latest data of the National Crime Records Bureau released by the Union Home Ministry, Gujarat saw a spike in the number of cyber crime cases and it ranked 13th out of 29 states and seven Union territories with the overall cyber crime rate of 0.7%. When it comes to cyber crime in metropolitan cities,  Surat ranked 12th among 19 metro cities of India.

Fraud was termed the motive in most of the cases , amounting to 66 % of total cases. Six of the accused confessed personal revenge as driving force whereas three claimed that they has committed crime of prank .

A senior cyber cell official said  a number of applications for complaints have been increasing over past five years .

MODUS OPERANDI

According to police, the callers, posing as representatives of a particular bank or company, initially build trust with their victims and later force them to share details or submit money in multiple accounts. In almost all the instances, the fraud was done with not just one phone call but over a long period where the victim was led to believe that they were being guided by their banks or companies such as insurance.

While the banking and insurance scams continue throughout the year, shopping sites scam occur mostly during festivals such as  Diwali, Christmas and Eid. Moreover, even private banks do nothing to update their customers, regarding basic cyber security guidelines. Need of the hour is both policing and awareness to curb such call centres .

The customers must verify the authenticity of the calls before sharing any details with them.

“Be it inbound or outbound call centres, no bank will ask for account number, debit card details, aadhar card number, one time password or any other credential from their customer on phone. When it comes to insurance related calls, one must be vigilant and verify the caller’s identity first.

Similarly, private companies do not ask for any registration fees when you shoot your job application to them .

We often see that private banks do not go for triple layer security when it comes to online banking despite recommendations from the Reserve Bank of India. While we have our laws in place to tackle the cyber crimes, much more needs to be done for the implementation. Similarly, banks, insurance companies and financial centres must ensure that there is no data leakage from their side .

CHALLENGES

With new trends in financial crimes, ever growing call centres in Delhi , and lack of coordination between different state agencies, the challenge for Cyber Crime police in Gujarat has only increased in the past few years. The recovery in these cases is almost zero and police action is ensued usually months after the complaint is registered, giving ample time to the criminals to shift base.

Maximum call centres targeting people from Gujarat were traced to Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Jamtara district of Jharkhand, which has a mechanism to run such frauds .

Conmen choose Gujarat cities as it is a business-driven state where people in general have more money and there is comparatively less knowledge about cyber safety than compared to metropolitan cities .

With the late penetration of cell phones and internet in these places, the people are not that aware of the phishing methods and ways to strengthen personal cyber security. They easily get influenced by the callers and are coerced to reveal their personal and banking details on phone .

CONCLUSION

Though there is less awareness about cyber crime in Surat city but compared to before the awareness is increasing and more efforts should be done to aware the people . Even today cyber crimes are done on OLX platform . Almost thrice in a month there is a news of person being cheated on OLX which is another tool for these criminals.

What computer and cyber crime will become in the future is not predictable. Things that have been happening before is not what will happen in the future, because everyday there is an advancement in the computer world.

There are a lot of cyber crimes victims who refuse to report petty crimes, because they feel what they have lost are too small, they feel its better to loose than to be embarrassed.

I hope that the people of this society will take this case very seriously. Computer crime should be stopped. Reports should be filed immediately no matter how small a crime is because other people may learn from your mistakes.