‘95 per cent cyber crimes are avoidable with precautions’

In an ongoing investigation of controversial apps developed for auctioning Muslim womenespecially journalistsonline, several arrests have taken place in the past few days following outrage on social media. The culprits included freelance web developer Aumkareshwar Thakur from Indore, who allegedly created the Sulli Deals app that listed hundreds of Muslim women for auction by sourcing their morphed pictures, Niraj Bishnoi, the alleged creator of a similar app called Bulli Bai in Assam and Shweta Singh, Mayank Rawal and Vishal Kumar Jha. In light of this brewing conversation around cyber safety, Dr Gaurav Gupta and Dr Garima Guptas book Cyber Unsafe: A Handbook for Preventing Computer Frauds and Cyber Crimes (Vilvam Publications India Private Limited) proves particularly useful. mid-day spoke to Gupta, who is the first Indian to earn a doctorate in the field of digital forensics, about his book. Aumkareshwar Thakur who allegedly created the Sulli Deals app was arrested from Indore, while Niraj Bishnoi, the creator of the Bulli Bai app was arrested on January 6 In 2001, Gupta joined as a research scholar at the Central Forensics Science Laboratory, Hyderabad to work in the area of cyber crime investigation. This was a time when not much was happening in India given its narrow scope of digitalisation, he says, with few and simple frauds like theft of a companys source code or internet time stealing. Gupta who did his doctorate at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and keen to anticipate criminal behaviour, developed steganographic solutions and ways of detecting counterfeit documents made by printers. With the pandemic fuelling more frauds with peoples increased technological dependence, he was convinced of the need to reach more people. Cybercrime is the fastest growing type of crime across the world. Technology is invading our day to day activities from ordering food to online classes, says Gupta, explaining that these crimes have increased for two reasonspeoples need for convenience, which is being provided by technology, and their innate trust-worthy nature. They believe that nothing bad can happen to them, and their emotions like trust, greed and fear are being exploited by criminals, says Gupta, who was aided in this project by his younger sister Garima, an expert in the area of psychology and special education. The idea was to offer myth-busting, non-technical advice through relatable stories, which will educate people on how to avoid cyber crimes. Gaurav Gupta. Pic/Nishad Alam A most vulnerable frontier and key to the raging Bulli Bai app controversy is the centrality of social media in our lives. When you are posting your photo on Twitter or Facebook, you are not only posting your photo, but also the GPS coordinate of that particular photograph, and information like what kind of camera you use, its resolution and make, which means you are revealing your address and that you are wealthy if you are using an iPhone, Gupta tells us. Again, when you are posting say, that you are going to Goa for a week, it tells a potential criminal that the house whose location you posted earlier through a different photo is empty and primed for a robbery. Social media then is being used by criminals to mine information about individuals even as SM platforms themselves collect information on their users. What I do typically is that every three or six months, I go to the Google timeline, download all the data offline and then delete it from there so that in case of my device being stolen, nobody can see my data on Google. What everyone must understand is that everybody is important, everybodys data is important and everybody has assets that criminals are after, he insists. Even if you dont have a lot of money and you think you are not important, your data is important. People can also hack into your systems to use your computing resources, your electricity and bandwidth to carry out activities like bitcoin mining, he warns, insisting on the importance of cyber hygiene. This makes it among 62 myths and 100 stories and scenarios that Gupta has discussed in the book. Lack of awareness is the primary cause behind invasion of cyber privacy, says Gupta. When defrauded, people need to inform others. But people dont tell others thinking their reputation will go for a toss. Around 95 per cent of the cyber crimes are avoidable if one can take small precautions. Handy tips Dont connect to a free Wi-Fi because it is unencrypted so what one is doing can be snooped upon by people in that network. Again, charging phones at airport kiosks might result in stealth of data or the installation of a virus or a malicious software. So, the safe way, he offers, is to not charge ones phone. Charge a power bank instead, or at least switch off the phone when charging. ATM machines are available to be bought in the market for Rs 5 lakh. A machine can record a persons card and pin and say, ‘no cash, and a criminal can reproduce the card and withdraw money. The simple solution is that when using an ATM machine, enter an incorrect pin once. The genuine machine will go back to the banks server and check the pin whereas the counterfeit machine cannot connect to the server of the bank. It is programmed to say ‘no cash even if its the pin thats wrong.

‘95 per cent cyber crimes are avoidable with precautions’

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