In the first two months of this year, Bengalureans lost a whopping `240 crore to cybercrime. If projections are to be believed, residents of the ‘IT Capital of India’ are likely to lose at least Rs 1,440 crore by the end of this year. But real loss could be much more. Officials involved in curtailing this menace admit that given the rising trends of perpetrators using newer methodologies, it is becoming increasingly difficult to detect cybercrimes, allowing the perpetrators to go scot-free.
There is a marked decline in detection rate, as per the data for Bengaluru. In 2022, detection rate stood at 22.8%, but dropped to 8.1% in 2023, before further plummeting to a mere 1.36% in January-February 2024. Within the first two months of 2024, Bengaluru saw 3,151 cybercrime cases registered, of which 828 cases involved job frauds, and only 11 were detected. According to the data, individuals have collectively lost over Rs 63.8 crore to job fraud scams alone — a lure that easily attracts the unemployed who are desperately seeking lucrative jobs promised by the perpetrators, but ending up losing money, let alone not getting the promised job.
According to the India CyberCrime Coordination Centre (I4C), from April 2021 until now, Rs 10,319 crore has been lost due to cyber crime attacks across India. Cybercriminals have a range of methods to target people — email and internet fraud; identity fraud (where personal information is stolen and used); theft of financial or card payment data; stealing and selling corporate data; cyber-extortion (ransom demands to prevent threatened attacks); cyber-extortion; hackers mining cryptocurrency by using resources they do not, a method called ‘cryptojacking’; cyber-espionage (accessing government or company data); infringing copyright; illegal online gambling; sale of illegal items online; and soliciting, producing, or possessing child pornography for sale.
While cybercrime has been around for years, it has escalated lately with newer trends emerging to fox not just the gullible public, but also the cyber police. Awareness programmes to alert people against cyber predators seem to be not working. This calls for urgent steps on a war-footing by the Central and the state governments to set up special agencies dedicated to preventing and detecting cybercrimes. Otherwise, these criminals will continue to con innocent citizens and steal their hard-earned money.