Every day we hear of cybercrimes happening all around us. All of us are happy that everything is digitised in life today and we are able to do all our financial transactions online. The convenience of internet and mobile banking is indeed a boon.

However, I was recently visiting a friend and he narrated a harrowing experience ,of being a victim of cybercrime and it shook the wits out of me and my spouse. I could not even believe that, this could happen to my friend, who holds a Ph.D and is well versed with most things in life.

I want to share the details of his experience ,for my readers ,so that more of us are aware of how cyber criminals operate and what precautions we could take, to prevent such crimes and also report them to the authorities concerned.

It all started with a fictitious phone call from an unknown person, claiming to be calling from an international courier company, that he has received a parcel from an international city and it has reached Mumbai. The parcel has been confiscated by the police and he needs to verify his credentials.

Then he gets another phone call ,claiming it is from the police, who have confiscated the parcel as it contained some illegal items. He needs to get on a Skype call ,to identify the parcel and the veracity of the senders.

This friend of mine stays alone and they advised him to get on a call on Skype and kept him on call for a few hours. Meanwhile, during the call, they also advised him to transfer some money, into a particular account, since they had to verify money trails. hence, it was necessary for him to send the money from his account. This continued and in the process he transferred a substantial amount, since he was mentally under siege. This is termed digital arrest nowadays.

When all this ended, he realised that it was cyber crime and he had lost a substantial amount of money to cyber criminals. Then, he reported to the police and the cyber crime cell, of the government. The good news is that ,after a long drawn process of investigation and courts etc, he got his money back ,although he went through all the mental turmoil and also the process of courts, advocates and had to spend some money to recover his lost money.

What I would like to highlight is that ,when such fiticitious calls come to us, we should either not pick up or not share any personal details including bank details, PAN or Aadhar numbers etc. We should report to our friends/relatives and also the police ,if we suspect any foul play since all such calls come from mobile numbers and can be easily identified.

In no case, we should transfer any money and as early as possible, keep all evidence of the phone numbers and name of caller and report it to the cyber crime cell of the police(1930 in India). We should definitely not get into any video call with any agency, as no police force or other agencies, will ask for our personal details on phone or video calls.

In a world, which is digitalised, all our information is available on the internet. Such criminals collect all our family details etc and try to threaten us ,with half baked information. We succumb to such calls unknowingly and then regret our actions. Any of us could easily fall prey to such actions. This blog is just an eye opener ,to such crimes happening around us, every day.

If we take the basic precautions of either not picking up unknown calls or ensuring that we do not share any personal information on phone or video calls with anyone, it could prevent such crimes. Further, we should report such calls immediately to cyber crime cell of the police ,so that innocent citizens do not fall victim to such nefarious acts of criminals.

Let us spread the word and take all the necessary precautions from today.

S Ramesh Shankar

21st April 2024