1,592 cyber frauds already this year & counting

Amit Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 15

There is no let-up in online cheating and debit and credit fraud cases in the city, which constitute almost 50 per cent of the total 1,592 complaints received by the Cyber Cell of the UT police this year.

Even as the police and banks have been conducting awareness drives and educating people about the dos and don’ts, gullible people are falling prey to cyber fraud. The cases of cyber crime, especially credit and debit card frauds and phishing, have steadily risen over the past few years.

The number of complaints has swollen this year with 761 people already duped so far through online cheating and debit and credit card frauds. Out of the 761 complaints, 454 pertain to transfer of money through debit and credit cards by making online transactions while the remaining relate to ATM card misuse and card cloning.

The police claim that naive people get easily tricked by swindlers who pose themselves as bank employees. The accused already have some information about the victims and manage to convince them in revealing more information related to the account, which is not supposed to be shared.

Meanwhile, the success rate of the police in cracking these cases is less. The police say they cannot do much because it was tough to trace the caller as they use bogus identities while making transactions. In addition to this, the police lack the required updated skills to investigate such cases.

Furthermore, the cops have also received 152 complaints related to harassment, abusive messages received on mobile phone and messenger WhatsApp. The police have also received 174 complaints regarding harassment, cheating and hacking of social networking accounts. In addition, people also approach cops with complaints related to cheating on websites.

Various initiatives planned by the UT Administration to crack cyber fraud cases are in the pipeline. One of them is setting up of a cyber defence directorate for collection of cyber intelligence and investigation, imparting training and educating public and children to make them cyber safe.

3 Romanians held last month

Three Romanians were arrested by the Crime Branch of the UT police last month for installing skimmers and cameras at three ATMs of Canara bank at Sector 35, Mani Majra and Sector 17. The arrest of foreign nationals had led to recovery of 650 ATM cards, six ATM keyboard camera devices, 26 ATM cards with PIN, two laptops, three ATM skimmers, different types of wires, data cables and a magnetic strip card reader.