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Mumbai undertakes cyber safety drive

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI, INDIA: With cyber crimes across India and the world rising by the day, the city of Mumbai has undertaken various educational and public awareness initiatives as part of its oncoming Mumbai Cyber Safety Week 2010 celebrations.

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“Do people know what are the activities related to cyber crimes? A vast majority does not even know that they have been victims of cyber crimes. There are lots of under-reporting of cyber crimes due to various social and other reasons,” says Pratap Reddy, director Cyber Safety, NASSCOM.

He adds that even corporates don’t report cyber crimes or activities, fearing business consequences, loss of company’s image and investors’ interests.

Commenting on younger generations using twitter and social networks, Reddy warns, “Sharing personal details and information about their hangouts and other preplanned activities can be easily traced by criminals and will lead to crimes.”

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About prevailing ignorance of cyber crimes among educated public, ad-guru Bharat Dhabolkar points, “Many people who are part of social networks come to me and tell that their identities have been stolen, but don’t know where to report, mainly because of lack of awareness and education about cyber crimes and Internet security.”

He adds that the need of the hour is to run awareness campaigns and educate people and suggests that police departments should create news campaigns, which can be published on the Internet so as to create more impact and awareness among Internet and computer users.

According to KPMG’s Mumbai Home Survey 2010 about only 4 per cent people agreed that they were online fraud victims, while 79 per cent people where ignorant about whom to report cyber crimes.

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Sharing the police departments’ initiatives, Mumbai Police Commissioner D Shivanandan says, “We need to have interface with public and so we have created a website (http://copconnect.in) where people can report or discuss criminal issues and problems they are facing. Also, we have given identity to volunteers such as students who want to participate in helping people and police.”

he added that the police department had trained students of H R College on how to go out and secure open Wi-Fi networks. In the past years, Mumbai city had faced terror incidents, where the terrorists had used unsecured Wi-Fi networks for sending email threats and other terrorist acts.

“Cyber threats and crimes are borderless, so we need help from Internet Service Providers (ISP) and cyber café owners. We need them to partner with us to ensure cyber safety. The idea is to make people aware about cyber security and crimes,” Shivanandan points.

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On the extensive popularity of social networking sites among youngsters, Vu Technologies CEO Devita Saraf comments, “Younger generation shares all sorts of information on such sites and people who feel pressure from their peers, emotional stress or having introvert nature try to share their views, thoughts and emotions via online posts or scraps.”

According to KPMG study, about 59 per cent people participated in the study said they were aware about cyber safety education for children, while 62 per cent people did not monitor their children’s Internet activities.

“Personal information can have glaring impact in personal life as well as such information can be stolen by cyber criminals. And by sharing all details, young people are giving opportunity to cyber criminals,” Devita observes.

On safeguarding children and younger generations against cyber crimes, Aptech CEO and managing director, Ninad Karpe stresses that time has come to include the cyber safety education as part of school curriculam so that children can be made well-aware and educated at early age.

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