Chennai: The next time you upload any sensitive information in your computer or smart phone, be extra careful. Cyber spooks are on the prowl to outsmart your smart phone and steal your data. And, going by statistics, the number of such crimes have nearly doubled in the country every passing year. Quite on the contrary, the incidence of such online crimes in Tamil Nadu seem to be throwing up a downhill trend.
Crime in India - 2011, a report compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau, points out that as many as 1,791 cases were registered in India under the Information Technology (IT) Act, which is 85.4 per cent more than the previous year’s figure of 966. This was the second consecutive year that the number of cyber crimes doubled in the country.
In 2010 too, the number of cases registered under the IT Act had rose by 130 per cent compared to the previous year. Strikingly, the number of persons arrested under the IT Act had risen by four times — from 288 persons in 2010 to 1,184 persons in 2011. With the increasing use of electronic gadgets, the spurt in the number of cyber crimes was only on the expected lines. But experts also blame it on the lack of adequate awareness among technology companies and end users.
“Many people don’t know that smart phones are one of the most vulnerable gadgets. It is very easy to steal data stored in smart phones. But in recent days several people are opting for the smart phones and loading almost all the information about them in it,” says S N Ravichandran, secretary of Cyber Society of India, Coimbatore.
Hacking accounted for nearly 55 per cent of the cyber crime. The second most common cyber crime was obscene publication or transmission in electronic form - it accounted for 27.7 per cent of the cases.
Among the states, Andhra Pradesh topped the list accounting for 19.5 per cent (349 cases) of the cases booked under the IT Act. It was followed by Maharashtra (306 cases), Kerala (227 cases) and Karnataka (151 cases). With 117 cases, Bengaluru topped among the cities.
Interestingly, Tamil Nadu, a major IT hub, has recorded a decline in the cyber crimes. While 52 cases were registered under IT Act in 2010, it has declined to 37 cases in 2011. Two main cities of the state — Chennai (13 cases) and Coimbatore (15 cases) — accounted for over 75 per cent of the cyber crime cases in the state. While Madurai city registered no cases, Trichy had registered a lone case under the IT Act.
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