Cyber Crimes Spurt in Assam

GUWAHATI: Assam has witnessed a sharp increase in cases of cyber crime primarily due to easy access to the internet by criminals and negative use of social networking sites.

The State has the highest number of cases registered under cyber crime in the entire Northeast. Figures available with the Assam Police show that the number of cyber crime cases in Assam registered under the provisions of Information and Technology Act, 2000, leapfrogged from 379 in 2014 to 483 in 2015 followed by 696 in 2016, 1267 in 2017 and 868 upto June in 2018.

Sources told The Sentinel that criminals are taking advantage of the people’s general lack of knowledge to enter into cyber space to make it the domain of their nefarious activities. In several cyber crime cases committed in the recent years the culprits had managed to get access to victims’ bank details and swindled money from them. This happened only due to lack of knowledge on the part of the victims, the source said, adding that cyber criminals are now mainly targeting to cheat people on monetary deals. A majority of these financial frauds were online banking frauds and credit cards frauds. The criminals are working out various tactics to commit fraudulent financial transactions by using internet.

“With the rising popularity of social networking sites, there has also been an increase in the cases of defamation on those sites,” a police official said. The police is increasingly receiving a number of cases related to defamation, threats and personal attacks made through social media.

Assam Police have, however, added more teeth to its capability to combat the emerging cyber threats with the commissioning of a cyber dome and a digital investigation and technical analysis centre.

The cyber dome is a centre of excellence for Assam police to meet long-term security challenges in the digital arena and for capacity building of police personnel and creating basic cyber awareness among general population.The facility will engage in Internet monitoring, technical intelligence collection, cyber forensics, Skype call analysis, counter cyber terrorism, darknet exploring, investigation of crimes related to the social media, big data analytics and cybersecurity of the digital Infrastructure.

Also Read: Top Headlines