Hyderabad: Cybercrimes see no let-up in lockdown

As per the data by the cyber crime police of Hyderabad Commissionerate, in 2020 till Thursday more than 900 FIRs have been filed. As many as 70 fraudsters have been caught by the police. The data also states that there has been a total of 831 cases of online frauds till date

Hyderabad: With people spending more time online while staying at home during a lockdown, the Hyderabad Commissionerate witnessed a spike in number of cybercrimes. In 2020 till Thursday, more than 900 FIRs have been filed while in 2019, a total of 1,393 cases were booked by the Hyderabad cyber police. According to the cybercrime police officials, these fraudsters mislead the locals and try to get their UPI and ATM pin and other information related to the victim's bank account. The gullible victims unknowingly fall prey to the smooth talks of the fraudsters and lose their savings.

As per the data by the cyber crime police of Hyderabad Commissionerate, in 2020 till Thursday more than 900 FIRs have been filed. As many as 70 fraudsters have been caught by the police. The data also states that there has been a total of 831 cases of online frauds till date.

In 2019, a total of 1,393 cases were booked by the Hyderabad cyber police. Out of this, a total of 207 fraudsters were detected and 341 fraudsters were caught.

Speaking to The Hans India, KVM Prasad, Assistant Commissioner of Police, cybercrime, Hyderabad, said, "There has been a significant increase of the frauds on social media as people have been staying online for hours during this current pandemic. Apart from the increase of cybercrimes like Olx frauds and phishing calls, people are becoming targets of frauds where they have been chatting with unknown people for passing their time."

CH Y Srinivas Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police, cybercrime, Cyberabad Commissionerate, said, "As there are more IT related activities in Cyberabad more cases are filed here. Fraudsters mislead the innocent citizens and collect bank details, debit and credit card details, UPI PIN No, net banking PIN no, collect remote access application IDs and knock away the amounts."

Further, he says, "Fraudsters make websites with domain names that look similar to payment gateways. During the lockdown, there have been several searches of terms like 'COVID-19' and 'coronavirus', cyber criminals created thousands of sites to carry out spam campaigns or to spread malware."

In one of the cases, Ghouse Basha Shaik, a 58-year-old resident of Malakpet received a call from an unknown number claiming to be from Bajaj Finance and said that he was eligible for a Bajaj credit card to which he agreed.

Later, he shared an app link to his mobile number and asked him to download that link and he will have to pay Rs 64 as registration charges to activate his application for card. When he entered all his details and paid the amount, a few moments later a total of Rs 50,000 from his account was deducted.