Individual preparedness is the key to tackle cyber-crime!

One of the top-most priorities of the present government has been rapid Digitisation – the process of converting information from physical format into a digital one – being pursued under its Digital India campaign (run by the Ministry of Electronics and IT). Resultantly, the users’ digital footprint – the information that exists on the internet as a result of one’s online activities – has grown massively over the last few years.

There were around 692 million active internet users in India in July 2022 and of which 346 million (up from 230 million in 2019) Indians were engaged in online transactions including e-commerce and digital payments. The total number of active internet users is projected to grow to 900 million by 2025, as per an article published in the Mint.

One critical fallout of such rapid digitization has been the meteoric increase in the number of cyber-crimes in the country. Sample this: while India witnessed about 2.08 lakh cyber-crime cases in the entire year of 2018, the number of cases reported in the first two months of the year 2022 were 2.12 lakhs. The experts cite various reasons for this undesirable trend, primarily lack of awareness among the users and lack technical knowledge among police and people.

The most credible tool to tackle the menace of cyber-crimes is ‘individual preparedness’. Listed below are the few instances which have been faced by internet users on a regular basis and the recommended action thereby (as published in the recent publication of ET Wealth, dated 5^th Sep):

Link received in an email/ SMS, requiring you to click on the same.

The best way to handle this is to type the URL yourself to make sure you are accessing the intended website (of a bank, shopping portal, etc.). Fraudsters often use distorted variation of the real one (say xyzbnak instead of xyzbank) to fool the users. Alternatively, you use ‘Whois Domain Lookup’ (https://wwwwhois.com) to check who owns the domain name, where are they based and for how long the website has been active.

Call received from your bank’s representative asking about some details.

Unexpected calls from the bank, offering new schemes or discounts can be a source of fraud. Generally such callers mention during the call some of your personal information to gain confidence. Instead of falling for the bait, you should rather call the bank’s helpline yourself.

Message received from a friend/ colleague, asking for money.

Such messages have been received on Facebook/ WhatsApp, usually from close acquaintances, asking for financial help. The fraudsters hack the social media account and send out such messages to the Contacts. You can simply pick up the phone and enquire about the same from your friend/ colleague.

Opt for dual-factor authentication.

Also known as Two-Factor Authentication (TFA), it is already compulsory for financial transactions and you would be using the same regularly, during such transactions. In fact, you must use it for securing other important platforms as well, wherever it is available.

Install security software on your phone.

Though most of us use an anti-virus on our PCs but hardly anyone uses any such protection on their phones. The phones are being used for executing financial transactions, making hotel bookings, storing personal data and passwords, etc. It is critical to use comprehensive protection software on all your devices.

Use Digital Lockers to save passwords.

DigiLocker is a facility offered by the government to save one’s confidential and personal data and documents. There are other options available as well. These enable you to save your information in an encrypted format. Using simple and easy-to-guess passwords is also a risk. You could use a Password Manager, an online tool providing a strong defence against cyber-crimes.