Cybercrime: Debit/credit card fraud in Navi Mumbai drops by 22% from Jan-May 2016

Mumbai city news: The Navi Mumbai police have attributed the drop to increasing awareness programmes.

Debit and credit card frauds in Navi Mumbai fell to 300 between January and May this year from 365 in the corresponding period last year — a drop of 22%. The Navi Mumbai police have attributed the drop to increasing awareness programmes. After demonetisation in November last year, cybercrimes, including card frauds, have seen an upward swing in many cities, including Mumbai.

The police said most cases were related to vishing calls. (HT)

The police said most cases were related to vishing calls in which imposters identified themselves as bank officials and tried to obtain credit or debit card details. Other cases pertained to phishing attacks in which people’s computers were hacked to get card information.

Tushar Doshi, deputy commissioner of police (crime branch), said the police would undertake more campaigns to reduce such crimes further.

“There is also a proposal of converting the cryber cells of some cities into full-fledged cyber police stations. If the state government takes the decision, our cyber cell will also become a police station,” he said.

Ankush Khedekar, senior police inspector of city cyber cell said, “As far as cybercrimes in Navi Mumbai are concerned, demonetisation had no effect. We did not see any difference in the statistics of the last two months of 2016 and that of the previous months.”

“We are undertaking massive drives during festivals such as Ganesh Chaturthi and Dussehera. We put hoardings, sharing tips on how to prevent such crimes. We also prepared a CD on such crimes last year and are now distributing them among the people.” Khedekar said.

It was earlier assumed that the residents of rural areas are not that exposed to internet and the outside world and hence their possibility of falling for such criminals was higher. The police started conducting more awareness drives compared to the urban areas. However, they have now realized that there is no truth in that.

“The cyber thieves do not call people seeing their bank balance. They call random people and try to win their confidence on various pretexts. Some officials from the cyber cell have also received such calls,” another police officer said.

“Creating awareness among the people seems to be only solution. Therefore we are now thinking what more could be done to do that people can understand the fake calls easily,” he added.