In most review meetings involving top security officials, one topic that is always on the discussion table relates to fighting cybercrime. After all it has been ranked as one of the top threats for the country and all efforts are being taken to minimise the number of such incidents, which eventually end up emptying the pockets of the common man.
Leading this fight against this menace is the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C). The fight against cybercrime appears to be on the right track and there are statistics to back this claim. Last year by November, the 132,000 IMEIs and and nearly 69 lakh SIM cards that were used to commit cybercrimes were rendered useless thank to a relentless pursuit by the I4C.
The I4C charge
I4C is one of the most important when it comes to fighting cybercrime. It has blocked over 59,000 WhatsApp accounts and tools that are used to commit crimes. Further nearly 1,700 Skype Ids have been blocked.
The success is a result of meticulous planning and solid Intelligence gathering. All these tools were used by cyber criminals to siphon off money from the banks, carry out digital arrests and government impersonation schemes.
In any operation be it terrorism or Maoism, in order to fight it ground offensives alone are not sufficient. The money has to froze and once that happens, then any notorious movement begins to die. It is the same when it comes to cybercrime.
To fight the money trail, the Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) was put in charge. The job of the CFMC is to liaison with financial intermediaries, banks, IT service providers, payment aggregators and law enforcement agencies. All of them work in tandem in real time to detect financial frauds committed on the cyber space.
Thanks to this coordination, the CFMC has managed to freeze nearly 8.6 lakh mule accounts. The mule accounts are innocuous bank accounts where the stolen wealth is stored.
Further the government had unveiled the Suspect Registry which was developed in collaboration with banks and financial institutions. The idea was to target a large number of cyber criminals. As a result of this Rs 14,00 crore was shielded from vanishing, while 5.6 lakh fraudulent transactions were prevented.
Further the government also set up by The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System in 2021. This led to the setting up of the toll-free number 1930 and also an online portal to report cybercrime. Since it has been set nearly 994,000 cases have been reported by citizens. This in turn led to Rs 3,431 crore from being stolen by cyber criminals. In fact, this initiative is crucial in the war against cybercrime as it acts as the first line of defence.
Cut off at source
In recent months, incidents of digital arrests have gone up. Despite there being so many advisories, many continue to fall trap to these frauds. The government has collaborated with the Telecom Service Providers and devised a system to detect and neutralise international spoof calls.
The callers fool victims into believing that they are speaking with Indian government authorities. The new directive now mandates the immediate blocking of such callers. Cutting these scammers at source has also aided in the battle against cybercrime.
While the agencies are at work day in and day out, it is also important that citizens themselves remain vigilant. The government has come up with the Report and Check Suspect feature on https://cybercrime.gov.in, which is the National cybercrime portal. This is a tool created so that people are able to verify suspected cybercriminals. This helps the people into not falling trap to cybercriminals.
While conducting an in-depth analysis, the agencies found that there are a couple of hotspots from where such crimes are committed the most. In order to tackle this, the Joint Cyber Coordination Teams have been deployed at Ahmedabad, Mewat, Hyderabad, Jamtara, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam and Chandigarh. The scammers are now on the back foot as these teams are constantly watching them and as a result of this there has been a drop in the number of schools crimes being committed from these hotspots.
The war continues
While the efforts and the statistics suggest that major strides have been taken in tackling cybercrime, the problem however persists. Hence the war would be an ongoing one.
This week, the cybercrime teams of the Gurugram police arrested 27 persons included a minor. These persons had defrauded people to the tune of Rs 157 crore. The team had received nearly 14,000 complaints in this regard.
The cyber teams then analysed the mobile phones and SIM cards of the accused persons. It was found that the accused would cheat people in the name of investing in the stock market. They would also offer online loans and make other lucrative offers in a bid to cheat the public. This group was also involved in sextortion through video calls, morphing, sending links through various means and posing as customs officials. They had indulged in several cases relating to digital arrests, the police learnt.
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