This is an age of Information Technology. The dominance of cell phones and computers have binded each and every one of us. We have all the information about the universe is available in our smart phones and computers. With the help of exciting electronic gadgets, cyber criminals do their online crimes. Mostly, women, children and elderly people are the victims of such online crimes. Let us see how to protect ourselves from such online crimes.
Earth’s population is around 794 billion. We have 726 billion active cell phone connections. 500 billion people use the internet. With the digital revolution, cyber crimes have also increased. Variety of cyber crimes such as Credit card fraud, OTP (one time password) fraud, account hacking, morphing blackmail, sexual arousal, identity theft, online stalking are happening on daily basis. Every crime done with the help of cell phones, computers can be termed as “Cyber Crime”. In India, 4.2 billion persons have been affected by cyber crimes. Cyber crime has no demarcation or boundaries. It can be done from any corner around the globe. Hence, it takes a longer time to nab the culprit/s. It is a challenging task to identify their ip-address, because the cyber crimes are conducted using VPN (Virtual Private Network).
One cannot be so complacent with themselves that cyber criminals are not in their vicinity. They are everywhere. He/ they might be one of the person/s where we regularly recharge our cell phones. For example, Ramadevi went to a shop near to her house to recharge for Rs.50. The person in the shop let us say, Sekar received the money from her and informed it will take some time to recharge due to slow network. Recharge will be done after sometime and you will get the message. After half an hour she received a message “recharge has been done for Rs.500.” Evening she met Sekar and told him, recharge has been done large amount and at the moment she don’t have the amount to repay him. Sekar told her since you are our regular customer you can repay when we have enough money. After that incident, both of them developed their friendship by exchanging messages between them. Friendship became love. It lead them to reserve room in a resort for a day. The next day, he broke up with Ramadevi.
Sekar blackmailed her, if she tells someone about their relation – the compromising photos and videos will be leaked online. She went into depression. Cyber criminal/s might be a single person or a group working to steal large sums of money. The best weapon against cyber crime is our “Awareness”. The names used in the incidents are changed. In the following week, let us discuss the working style of cyber criminals, how the victims of cyber blackmail should face them.