Tackling cyber crime

Cyber crime is a reality. May this year saw a sudden surge in bank-fraud-cases/internetbanking-fraud cases. Thousands of people in India get scammed every day and lose money to internet banking fraud or mobile banking fraud.

- AISHWARYA CHATURVEDI

Typically, scammers call bank customers pretending to be authorised representatives of the bank and then extract personal details from them. Despite Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s guidelines to not share One Time Passwords (OTPs), many people continue to fall prey to such scams. This not only indicates lack of awareness amongst customers but also potential breach of security/data compromise by banks. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook et cetera continue to host fake accounts that facilitate such scams.

Before delving deeper into what can be done to stop such scams, let us first understand what cyber crime is.

Different types of cyber crimes and penalties for the same are provided under the Information and Technology Act, 2000 and Indian Penal Code, 1860. In simple words it can be understood as an act that violates the law, and is perpetrated using information and communication technology (ICT) to either target networks, systems, data, websites and/or technology or facilitate a crime. Cybercrime is different from traditional crime in that it "knows no physical or geographic boundaries".

According to RBI’s annual report, the banking sector recorded 9,103 cases of frauds involving Rs 60,414 crore in 2021-22 and 7,359 cases of fraud involving Rs 1,38,211 crore in 2020-21.

The following steps can be taken to report a bank/financial fraud

A. File a complaint online with the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. A complaint for a financial fraud can be filed at https://cybercrime.gov.in/ in the following manner:

A complaint for reporting a financial fraud is easy to file and free of cost. It is advisable to file the complaint on the same day of the incident if not immediately.