MANY JAMTARAS BLOOMING ON A BED OF GREED

Cybercrime has become a low-risk, high-return caper in which transferring expertise is easy. So a number of hotspots have come up for launching such offences

- BIBEK DEBROY

MANY years ago, the then chief minister of Jharkhand asked me to work on a development plan for the state and I happened to visit Jamtara, not far from Dumka. At that time, the city or the district possessed nothing special to warrant all-India fame.

No longer. Partly because of an OTT series, everyone recognises Jamtara as the country's phishing capital. Films, TV serials and OTT series, fictionalised or documentary-type, reflect the reality. There are several on cybercrime, not only the one set in Jamtara.

Cybercrime assumes many formsphishing is only one variant. Cybercrime can target individuals, businesses or governments. (The National Cyber Coordination Centre is especially relevant for the last variety.) The ones we hear about, and that friends and acquaintances fall prey to, are targeted at individuals. I know of friends who succumbed many years ago to the Nigerian letter scam, though they should have known better. The more common cybercrimes targeting individuals.

are phishing, identity theft (SIM swap), hacking, cyber bullying, stalking and extortion, fake job offers, deliveries and lotteries. There can be no prophylactic against human rapacity.

The National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, the Reserve Bank and many others have information on what should be done before and after the fact. One of the best I have read was brought out in 2021 by the office of the RBI ombudsman. Titled 'Raju and the Forty Thieves', it contained "forty stories providing glimpses of fraudulent events being reported to us and simple tips about DOs and DON'Ts.

Raju is a typical gullible citizen, and, in these stories, he appears in different characters, sometimes as a senior citizen, sometimes as a farmer, sometimes as a happy-go-lucky guy". Those forty stories are about forty standard banking and financial scams.