K'taka cybercrime police undertakes awareness drive

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: An online session was conducted by the Karnataka Cybercrime CID to spread awareness among the citizens regarding cyber crime cases.

During the programme hosted on the official X, previously twitter, account of Cybercrime CID, senior officers including Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP), Cybercrime Division, Yeshwanth Kumar and a Senior Director of Data Security Council of India (DSCI) Venkateshmurthy, responded to queries raised by the netizens.

Sharing the official data, DySP Yeshwanth Kumar said that among all the cities in the state, Bengaluru has the most number of cyber crime victims followed by Mysuru and Mandya.

"As per Infor mation Technology (IT) Act 2000, any criminal activity which takes place on or over the medium of computers or internet or other technology is known as Cybercrime," he said.

Venkateshmurthy from DSCI said that cybercrime is more difficult to crack than traditional crimes. Traditional crimes tend to target individuals or physical assets such as offices, relatives, and homes, whereas Cybercrime targets online interconnected systems, digital assets, and sensitive personal information or health information.

"In a traditional crime case, the police can at least have some clue regarding the suspects involved, but it is not easy to gather such details in cybercrime cases," he said.

News Trail had earlier reported that nearly Rs 1 crore on an average was stolen everyday by cyber fraudsters in 2022 from individuals in Karnataka. The state lost a whopping Rs 363 crore in 2022, and since 2019 the scamsters have managed to siphon away Rs 722 crore.

The officials said that the cybercrime cases in Bengaluru have more than tripled between 2017 and 2022 and the number of cases this year may bear all previous records going by the trends in the last eight months.

The city which is home to several global technology firms and thousands of startups with an estimated 2.3 million tech workers, reported 9,940 cybercrime cases in 2022 recording a big jump from 2,742 in 2017, DySP Kumar said Venkateshmurthy said that the mode of cybercrimes has changed due to the increasing dependence of digital payment applications post Covid-19.

"Cyber education is very much essential at schools as internet crimes are likely to increase even more in the days to come," he said Responding to a question raised by a netizen on how to report cybercrime cases, DySP Kumar said that the Karnataka government has set up a dedicated wing known as Cyber Economics and Narcotics (CEN) to deal with cyber related cases across the state.

However the citizens can also visit their jurisdictional police to file cases regarding cybercrime. Other options to report such cases is by dialling toll-free numbers 112 or 1930 or log in to www. cybercrime.gov.in to file an online complaint.