Battle against cyber scammers

It calls for better awareness about digital arrest and guardrails against breach of private data

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eta’s adversarial threat report for the first half of 2026 found that Indians are the second-most targeted population — after Americans — ofa global cybercrime industry that has industrialised online fraud intoa corporate-style sector. The company took down 10.9 million accounts linked to scam centres in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the UAE, and the Philippines in 2025 alone. Criminal syndicates now operate from fortified compounds with trained workforces and, in some cases, private militias. They have adopted tactics once associated with State-backed hackers, identifying wealthy individuals and impersonating law enforcement or regulators to extract money — the so-called digital arrest. And they are embracing AI tools to create culturally tailored, hyper-personalised lures across languages and geograp