Cyber crime helplines

A victim of Cyber Crime? Here's help

Have you ever been stalked online, blackmailed or received email threats? If your answer is "yes", you are among the thousands today who are being attacked by Net criminals.

Like other parts of the world, India too is constantly under the threat of these heinous acts. Those of us who use our computers at home without proper security measures are often the easy victims for these crimes. In the physical world, if a crime is committed, we usually know what to do. Usually the nearest police station comes to the rescue. But what should you do for something you have no real proof, or someone who is not even visible? We bring you some tips which will help you get help quickly.

Cyber stalking or online harassment

This is one of the most common cyber crimes in India. If you are being stalked or harassed, don’t take it as a passing phase. Act fast.

• Avoid all contact with the stalker. Be assertive and diplomatic while communicating with him/her.

• Don’t change your phone number; instead let your answering machine or voice mail take the calls. This will prevent him from adapting ulterior contact strategies.

• Safeguard any evidence of threats like letters, email and voice messages. All this would be needed for legal action.

• Report it to the nearest cyber crime cell.

• If attempts of physical attack take place, file an FIR immediately.

Online Fraud

If you suddenly find out that your money has disappeared from your bank account or there have been discrepancies in your credit statements, your accounts might have been compromised.

• Contact your bank and start the process to ensure that you don’t lose any more money. Ask your bank how you can dispute charges and recover funds.

• Set up a fraud alert with cyber crime cell.

• Watch your credit card and other statements and see if there are transactions that you have not made. This is to ensure that there has been no identity theft.

• File a police report in your area

Spam/Abuse

If obnoxious unsolicited emails fill your inbox every day and refuse to go away, the simple solution is not just to delete them. Effective reporting of spam will ensure prosecution, fining or even jailing of spammers.

Report to: Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, India (CAUCE India)

Web: www.india.cauce. org

Hacking

If you find out that you have been hacked, there are broadly two ways to fix the problem.

Rollback: Backup all your important data and reinstall Windows.

System clean: You may also use freely downloadable utilities like Fport, TCP View, etc to clean up the files left by the hacker), but this is not recommended for the novice computer user since it requires a certain degree of technical know-how.

However, it is best to start afresh by reinstalling the operating system so that you can be sure that you machine is void of any infection. Call your service engineer for this. But if you have lost data, or credit card and other critical numbers, it’s best to speak with your banks and get necessary changes done to ensure no money loss occurs.

Cyber crime helplines

a) Superintendent of Police, Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC); Web: http://cbi.nic. in; Email: cbiccic@bol. net.in

b) Resource Center for Cyber Forensics (RCCF); Web: www.cdactvm. in; Email: cyber@cdactvm. in

c) India Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In): www.cert-in. org.in

Contributed by: Girish Kumar. M