Concerned by the rapidly growing incidents of cybercrimes where a vast majority of the vulnerable citizens are susceptible of being defrauded, the local Police, has launched a massive citizen’s awareness drive against cyber offenses. We provide below some pointer
Q. What is the goal of this Program and how will it be effective?
A. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. We feel prevention is better than cure. The goal of this program is therefore to create awareness about cyber frauds and cyber security. In fact, greater awareness of technology has helped us in solving cybercrimes by piecing together the chain of fraudulent financial transactions that the offenders undertake during and after the crime. For this, it is necessary for the victims to report the crime without any delay.
Crucial tips: In this age of technology and social media, our lives are no longer private. Almost all information about us is available in the public domain. Not just this, even couriers and food delivery personnel have our contact particulars. We should be careful about the details and the kind of information that we post on our social media so that it cannot be easily accessed by fraudsters. Even small little actions like removing our address stickers from the courier delivery boxes and online ordered food packets before discarding them go a long way in protecting us against cybercrime. Google is among the largest repository of your personal data as it remains activated on your mobile devices. Take out time to keep deleting any unwanted data by visiting takeout.google.com. Some of the tricks used by criminals to commit cybercrime include, Sending synthetic Video, images, audio, text, document
Setting up fake ATM that will collect your Card PIN without disbursing cash
Putting fake website on search engines that closely resemble the genuine websites and using them for phishing purposes
Making fake claims about calling from banks for obtaining sensitive data
Luring you into parting data about your bank accounts through fake lottery wins, Inheritance etc
Creating panic of card or account blocking to make you part with data that would enable them to hack into your account
Instilling false fear about injury or hospitalization of your near and dear ones
Cloning RFID Tags and Car key Fobs
People should never fall prey to any of these antics
Apart from this, some of the other measures that an alert citizen should take are,
Keep deleting unnecessary data from your computer and mobiles. It should be remembered that even the deleted data can be retrieved by unscrupulous elements unless it is permanently deleted
Never create a piece of Electronic data, including Video, Audio or Text, which you do not want to retain
Do a factory reset of your phone when exchanging your mobile phone with a new one
Beware of UPI frauds and avoid sharing the PIN/CVV of your Cards with anyone
Avoid using phone chargers that are available at public places like airports, shopping malls etc as these could carry malware. Similarly, avoid using complimentary pen drives
Do not use free Wi fi for accessing sensitive websites like your net banking
Lock your Aadhar bio metric to prevent its misuse never install any app from link sent by strangers
The era of technology has brought its own set of challenges and one must learn to adapt to technology using a cautious approach.
