Chandigarh sees 80% surge in cyber crime

Cyber attacks reported by Chandigarh residents in January 2020 have almost doubled compared to this month last year.

The UT police cyber cell said it received 613 complaints of crimes, including frauds and security threats, this January, up from 336 in January 2019.

At this pace, the numbers of complaints are likely to cross 10,000 by the end of 2020, said a cyber cell official, privy to the matter.

In fact, the number of cyber complaints increased from 2,242 in 2017 to 3,167 in 2018, making for a 41% increase, while in 2019, the number of complaints received was 4,793, making for another 51% increase.

The lack of infrastructure in the cyber cell is matter of grave concern as 70% complaints of 2018 are pending, while 58% complaints of 2019 are pending with the department. Cases related to cyber crime are time consuming and their investigation takes up a lot of time. Mostly frauds are committed by criminals sitting far away, and tracing them itself is a huge task.

“The infrastructure and shortage of manpower to deal with the spike in complaints of cyber fraud is a matter of concern. We are putting forward a request for a separate cyber complaint desk that can scrutinise and verify complaints at the primary stage,” said a police official, requesting anonymity.

SURGE IN CARD CLONING, ATM MISUSE
According to police, due to rise in digital transactions and their widespread use in the interiors of the country, cyber attacks on banks and fraud through transactions have seen a rise.

“There are reports of sale of credit and debit card details on multiple underground websites which has also become a big cause for financial fraud. After gathering details of a person’s cards, fraudsters resort to duping them. We received 1,281 complaints of card cloning and misuse last year, and the number of such complaints continues to grow this year,” said Rashmi Sharma, deputy superintendent of police, cyber crime.

Recently, hackers disabled business operations of a pharma company based in Manimajra and sought bribe from its owner in Bitcoins.

However, the most common fraud pertains to fake customer support executives calling gullible people for bank details, said Sharma. Last year, the cyber cell received 876 such complaints. Meanwhile, nearly 100 complaints have been received about tricksters calling for KYC update of Paytm and using the details to commit fraud.