SHILLONG: The spate of cyber-crimes in the city is on the rise with numerous people especially females getting duped by unknown people who often lure young girls in the social networking website “Facebook”.
As per police statistics, twenty cases of cyber-crimes were reported in the city in the year 2012 followed by thirty four cases in 2013 and this year till February eight cases have been registered and city police have sounded an alarm over the increasing cases of cyber-crime where people are being duped worth lakhs.
Speaking to reporters, SP (City) Vivek Syiem said that all such cyber-crime cases are registered under IT Act even as he admitted that the trend of cyber-crime is increasing rapidly.
Informing about the various forms of cyber-crimes through which people are being duped, Syiem said the most common way of duping people is though SMS and calls where people are informed that they have won a lottery amounting to lakhs and crores and people are asked to send back some amount .
He said that in the month of November last year, a person had paid an amount of Rs Eight lakh when he was informed that he won a lottery amount and he was duped.
Then people are also duped when people get calls by unknown callers and they are asked to divulge their ATM details and pin by claiming that the ATM system is being overhauled and then huge amount of money is withdrawn from the victim’s account through internet banking.
Then there is one another way of duping people when people get calls from unidentified callers saying that a non bailable case is registered against them in some part of the country and then the person is asked to pay for the lawyer’s fee.
However, the biggest concern for the city police at the moment is “Facebook” where young boys and girls are first of all befriended with an impressive profile of a user from a foreign country and after months of conversation it is turns into intimacy. Later, the fake user finds an opportunity like birthday, valentine’s day or any other special occasion and pretends to have sent a special gift or a parcel for the victim following which, the victim gets a call from a lady claiming herself to be from Custom department and tells the victim that the parcel has been confiscated and the victim has to pay a penalty and then the victim is asked to deposit huge amount of money in a bank account and she is cheated.
“If people get such calls or if they are asked to pay an amount, people should never entertain them and they should immediately inform police,” Syiem said while adding that female users are usually the main targets.
Police has tried to track down such bank accounts but the addresses turned out to be fake and Police has found that most of such users who dupe people are from Dimapur, Tripura, Manipur and Assam besides foreigners from Africa.
Concerned with the frequent case of duping through banks, Syiem underlined the need to strengthen the Know Your Customer (KYC) system of the banks.
“We have lodged our complaint with the website but it takes too long so the best solution is prevention,” he added.
