Police prepare to check cyber crimes

Prateek Chauhan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 28

Observing the trending cyber criminals active in Delhi, the Delhi Police Cyber Cell is preparing itself to check the crimes.

As per the data, 493 complaints were registered till August 31. In 2017, 790 such cases have been reported, 749 in 2016 and 725 in 2015. In the last six months, 30 cases have come to light.

In most of the incidents, the criminals extorted money in cryptocurrency Bitcoins by threatening to defame the victims. The currency has also been associated with online drug sales, money laundering and sex trafficking.

According to a cyber crime official, in sextortion, the criminal hack anybody’s system or network through malwares, accessing the browsing history and then keeps an eye on the users'' activities. Whenever the user watches porn, the hacker collects this information, threats the user through e-mails of exposing in public and extorts money.

Among other ways, sometimes, they hack the users’ computer system or network to collect the information and extort money. Or often, pretend to be a girl to gather the information. After gaining confidence, they ask for users’ intimate photos or send them links of porn sites prompting them to click. By these means, the cyber criminals sometimes victimise girls and demand ‘sexual favour’ or money, he said.

According to DCP Dr Anyesh Roy, children are  potential victims of cyber crimes. Using fake or obscene profiles, obscene emails or messages over social media, acquiring someone else’s identity are some of the common practices of cyber crimes.

He advises victims to immediately logout and report the matter to their parents and police, to initiate legal action.

District Crime Cells physically can be approached to file such type of complaints. Headers and URLs of such emails and websites should always be saved - they being essential to trace the culprit, Dr Roy said.

A senior cyber expert police officer asked people to not share e-mail ID, password, user ID with any stranger on mobile. He also advised to keep the passwords complicated by using numbers and other symbols alongwith characters so that the cyber criminal do not crack is easily; and use good anti-virus in laptop and computers.

The cyber cell is using new software to curtail cyber crime and to keep eye on the cyber criminals. The cell is buying malware forensic tools and to keep eye on those involved in transaction of cryptocurrency, it will get a cryptocurrency software. Having procured cloud forensic tool network and putting information on cloud will keep eye on those trying to escape police. Through ‘damage hard disc forensic tool’, they can even retrieve the damaged information.