Digitisation has been both a boon and a bane for human society. On one side, we have the benefits of huge networking, connectivity, and instant knowledge transfer. On the darker side, we are facing some of the most unprecedented issues, like concern for privacy, social media addiction and most importantly, cyber crimes. Cybercrimes are one of the issues for which human civilization was unprepared. Hence, we have to acknowledge its existence and also adapt ourselves for protection against it. Innumerable cybercrime portals, helplines, activists and awareness campaigns have been launched to safeguard the cyberhealth of every individual. Despite multiple measures, we come across many such cases of fraudsters phishing through emails for important information, bank robbery, illegal downloading, industrial espionage, child pornography, sextortion frauds, webcam blackmail and the list never ends. These are crimes where the culprit does not need to be present physically at the scene of the crime and can operate the business remotely.
Sunday POST spoke with individuals and professionals who have seen such crimes with close proximity to hear their thoughts on the issue:
KBC trap
Bhubaneswar-based Gouri Prasad Dash shared his experience of falling victim to phishing and successfully dealing with it. Gouri said that it was back in 2020, when he was preparing for competitive examinations. He registered in the KBC Play Along Contest with a few of his friends. “All of us used to participate in the contest for practice and to try our luck. I was astonished to receive a text one day, which read that I had won 25 lakhs rupees for answering a question, and in order to withdraw the amount, I was required to submit my bank credentials. When I refrained to do so, they continuously bugged me to send the scanned copies of my Aadhar card, passport, and voter ID,” said Gouri.
He further narrated, “As I denied sharing any of the above, they hacked into my social media handles, took the details of my family and started troubling them by sending anti-national videos of burning national flags and abusive voice messages. Internet equally helps spread your story to the masses, which is why I tweeted about this to the Prime Minister, Chief Minister, and National Investigation Agency (NIA). Sources and reports confirmed that the hackers and fraudsters belong to Pakistan.”
With India witnessing more than 500 sextortion cases on a daily basis, only 0.5% of these cases result in registered FIRs. Sextortion frauds and webcam blackmails have been around the corner for some time now.
Blackmail over nude video call
Akash Pandit, who has been a victim of webcam blackmail over nude video calls, said that he was shattered and confused about what happened over one business-related video call. The Cuttack-based entrepreneur recalled, “It was a call with the marketing team scheduled for daily updates. I am still confused if the link was broken because nobody from the team joined except a girl. She was a known face from the past and she was not wearing clothes. She was engaged in inappropriate activity during the call. In no time, I realised something was not right and hung up. But to my dismay, she had screen recorded the call for a few seconds, which had both our faces recognisable. Before I could access my social media, all of the handles were hacked and I could not log in to any.”
He added, “Calls from my friends and relatives poured in minutes after my social media handles were inaccessible to me; they asked me about the recent upload of a few seconds of video on all my social media channels. I was dumbfounded and out of words to explain anything to anybody. The damage was done in just an hour before I got back access to the handles.”
The way out
Inspector I/C Rashmita Jena, who has been seeing rampant growth in cyber crimes opined on the same. Expressing her grief, she said that it is extremely awful to see the youth of this country falling victims to financial fraud. She pinpointed the reason behind it as being greed for money. A lot of fraud is happening because people are unaware about not sharing their OTPs and account details and keeping their information private. The youth getting allured towards instant money needs to stop to curb such financial fraud. “If you don’t click on the links shared and don’t share the OTPs, no wrong can be done to you; hence, don’t get lured into this”, says Jena.
Speaking about the webcam blackmailing and nude video calling, the inspector said, “If at all you have been a victim of this, never get frightened and don’t give in by trying to transfer the amount the person asks for. Always remember that it was not you who was engaging in inappropriate activity, and the first thing you have to do after this is to file a report with the cyber section. And the only way to avoid this is by not receiving video calls from unknown numbers. What they usually do is play porn on the video call and record it”.
“Another fraud that is trending now is happening mostly over text messages and telegrams. Messages offering work from home, part-time jobs and salary details have a link attached to them, which, when clicked, redirects you to Telegram, which instantly doesn’t display the contact information of the fraudster”, adds Rashmita.
Statistics:
- India witnessed 13.9 lakh cybersecurity incidents in 2022, reports the Ministry of State for Electronics and Information and Technology
- Number of cybercrime cases from the state saw a huge spike from 385 in 2015 to 2037 in 2021, a whopping increase of 492%, reports Odisha Police
- Cyber criminals cheated several people from the state of about Rs 2 Crore in the year 2021
Smruti Rekha Barik, OP