Surfing alert: City sees 80% jump in cybercrime incidents this year

Surfing alert: City sees 80% jump in cybercrime incidents this year
Visakhapatnam: There has been a sharp increase in incidences of cybercrime in the city this year. Criminals have made away with nearly Rs 7 crore. Incidents of cybercrime have also increased in Vizianagaram and Srikakulam as well.A total of 365 cybercrimes were reported in the city in 2019, registering a sharp increase from 201 cases registered in 2018.Most of the cybercrimes were to deal with fraudulent transactions, vishing and phishing fraud, matrimonial fraud, online lottery fraud and extortion.Speaking to TOI, V Gopinath, inspector of Cybercrime police station (CPS) said that the amount of money that cyber criminals have been able to rob people off has gone up to Rs 7 crore in 2019 from Rs 2 crore in 2018. “The recovery rate has also increased from 2 per cent in 2018 and 8 per cent in 2019,” added Gopinath.The CPS inspector further said, “We won the first prize in the ‘Best Crime Detection’ category for detecting a case of spoofing in June. We managed to nab a four-member gang led by a BTech dropout who allegedly duped a former legislator of Rs 25 lakh by making spoof calls.”Of the 365 cases registered, the cybercrime police managed to detect 26 per cent of the cases. 90 people were arrested. This is marginally better than 2018 when 25 per cent of the 201 registered cases got detected.Over 80 per cent of reported cybercrimes are financial crimes. According to a senior police official, the reasons for the low rate of detection and conviction are multiple.“Most cyber criminals operate from Noida and New Delhi. Some are also based out of Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. We have to visit these places to crack a single case and sometimes it takes months to find ..

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