In this digital era, we are moving so fast and coping with the digital world. Humans are adopting as well as adapting technology with ease and comfort. We have different technologies which is an important part of our domestic and work life as audio and video technology, GPS and location service, different networks, 4G and 5G cloud service, smart homes, cyber security, and now the most popular and trending artificial intelligence. All these technologies have made significant change in the life of humans. With the advent of technology, we are facing some serious issues that are cyber crimes. According to 14th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, “Cybercrime is one of the fastest growing crimes and new kind of threats that are emerging all the time.” As per International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with an estimated 4.1 billion internet users worldwide, the threats to internet safety are growing exponentially.
Cybercrime may be defined as “any unlawful act where computer or communication device or computer network is used to commit or facilitate the commission of crime” (NCCRP). Cyber bullying, Cyber stalking, Cyber grooming, Online job fraud, Online sextortion, Phishing, Ransom, Child abuse, debit/credit Card fraud, Crypto jacking are some of the type of prevalent cyber crimes. These crimes have deep impact on society and an individual in various ways. Any kind of cybercrimes can result in financial loss to an individual, company and an organisation. It may disrupt emergency services which are providing 24×7 facilities to the citizens in case of. It may hurt the sentiments of common people by manipulating information on social media which leads to mob outbreak. Cyber bullying, create stress and mental pressure, which tend to harm anyone emotionally and psychologically.
DeepSeek is also drawing attention in digital world. Basically, it is a Chinese AI start-up known for developing the DeepSeek R1 model, a large language model (LLM) which is gaining popularity due to its cost-effectiveness. This model challenging the performance of Western AI- models. No doubt, DeepSeek is China’s testament to its growing technological independence and self-reliance. China is becoming tech independent. DeepSeek is as similar as Chat-GPT. But if we talk about the safety issues of this AI model, we need to analyze this model in various ways that is related to the breach of personal and sensitive information, personal activities done on computers; collecting large data by DeepSeek raises serious privacy concerns.
The crucial reason behind these issues is simple that the most the people never take any interest in reading the Terms of Services (TOS) or user agreement, which ultimately allows the app to gain control over your data. Why would I wish to be handled by China or any other country? DeepSeek allows cyber attacks because online platform is the only place where hackers target it easily. This may raise a deep concern for the national security. Ajay Kumar Das (Analyst of International Affairs and Security Studies) at United Service Institution of India mentioned that DeepSeek can be used by malicious actors without restrictions in various ways, for instance, to understand how to launch fishing attacks or fill internet with AI slopes, etc.
Next concern is regarding the user data synthesis, where sensitive data like keys/patterns, internet protocol, IP addresses and user personal details could be stored in secure servers located in China. Third concern is respecting the ability of DeepSeek to be influence thoughts and ideologies of its global users and feed authoritarian narratives on cultural and political topics as it censors/manipulate topics which are sensitive to the CCP.
Apart from this DeepSeek poses national security threats at the strategic domain. This AI model contains risk/sleeper agents which create nuance by insertion of vulnerabilities. Studies indicated that DeepSeek R1 is eleven times more harmful as it may generate malicious information related to extremist propaganda, criminal activities, religious frenzy, which might outbreak violence within the country. Hackers could easily retrieve passwords, local files stored on its server as DeepSeek claims to be an open acess platform.
There is no authentication mechanism so that these unprotected databases granted full control over its contents. It is infringement of security that DeepSeek open source structure allows to download and modify the application. It is made with such mechanism which alters not only its functionalities, but also its safety mechanism. Further, as per the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) DeepSeek failed to block a single harmful prompt in its security assessment, including prompts related to cybercrime and misinformation. Other models like open AI and Anthropic and Google take a more control approach to reduce above cited risk. DeepSeek is a wake up alarm for all the other AI companies. Its deep impact resulted that countries like Italy, Taiwan, Australia, and South Korea banned the access to this application on Government devices with immediate effect.
In the United States agencies like NASA and US Navy also instructed their employees against using this unprotected app. It may cause serious national security issues which are mentioned earlier. In India, a bench of Chief Justice D.K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gala said that “AI is a dangerous tool in anybody’s hand whether it is Chinese or American. It does not make any difference. It is not that the government is unaware of these things.” They are very well aware. The IT Minister also made a comment on fighting against this problem that the India will develop its own Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in the next three to five years, and work in the direction of creating domestic foundational AI platform which can be expected in the next ten months.
Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India taken up this issue on high priority and takes an initiative by establishing Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre to deal with cybercrimes in the country. This scheme was launched to tackle the cybercrimes by improving coordination between various law enforcement agencies and stakeholders. The major objective of 4C is to act as a nodal point to curb Cybercrime in the country to fight against the Cybercrime committed against women and children, facilitate easy filing of complaints on online portals and creating awareness about preventing cyber crimes.
These cyber crimes could be prevented by following some steps as:
- By creating strong password and keep on changing it’s time to time
- Use of multifactor authentication
- Keep your operating system and BIOS firmware updated
- Install antivirus on your laptops
- Use licensed software only
- Keep all GPS Bluetooth sensors, disabled and enabled only when required
- Stop sharing each and every information on social media
- Stop sharing personal information on every platform
- Kindly encrypted any important document and information
- Do not open any unknown link sent via email
We cannot deny technology; we have to move with it. With multiple technical resources, there is no more digital divide and with the rise of technology we are witnessing the innovation and creativity in different domains either it is education, medical, e-commerce etc. E-entrepreneurship is accelerating the economic growth as one can use digital skills to market and branding the product globally. But if we keep ourselves digitally aware, we may prevent from any kind of Cybercrime.
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