Internet Breeds More Crimes

Vinod Dixit

Internet banking frauds and ways to avoid them is undoubtedly a topic that has been done to death. And yet, people across India continue to lose money in such frauds with an alarming frequency. Today computer and internet have become very common and necessary for our daily life. Back in 1990, less than 100,000 people had access the internet worldwide. Now around 2.5 million people are hooked up to surf the net around the globe. 

The IT Act, 2000, was enacted primarily to provide a platform for e-commerce to take off in India. The Act does not sufficiently cover social media crimes and mobile phone crimes. No doubt, the implementation of the IT Rules, 2011, was a welcome move as it mandated provisions for Internet Service. Though, banks have multiple server farms and software to monitor security, banks need to work on how to have affective customer awareness programmes as far as cyber fraud and banking fraud are concerned.

As the use of internet is increasing, a new face of crime is spreading rapidly from in-person crime to nameless and faceless crimes involving computers. Cyber frauds include all unauthorised access of information and break security like privacy, password, etc. with the use of internet. Cyber frauds also include criminal activities performed by the use of computers like virus attacks, financial crimes, e-mail spamming, cyber phishing, cyber stalking, unauthorised access to computer system, theft of information contained in the electronic form, e-mail bombing, physically damaging the computer system, etc.

The internet brings joy to our lives but at the same time it has some negative sides too. The cyber criminals are always in a search to find out the new ways to attack the possible internet victims. New generation is growing up with computers and most important is that all the monetary transactions are moving on to the internet. So, it has become very important for us to be aware of the various cybercrimes being committed with the help of computers. The cybercrimes today are on rise and the latest and perhaps the most complicated problem in the cyber world. 

Earlier when the internet banking was started, we thought that user name and password was enough security but then additional security measures were developed, but that too is now proving futile. The vulnerability of credit and debit cards and net banking has made it easy for criminals who are just a click away from easy money. Thus, there is a need of widespread customer awareness about risks and threats of giving out confidential login information of internet banking. With the right permissions, hackers have succeeded in changing daily ATM cash limits and create fraudulent credit cards with new PINs for third parties to access accounts.

It is rightly said that “Prevention is better than cure” so it is always better to take certain precautions while operating the internet by way of  following good practices in order to minimise the security risk of increasing cybercrimes in banks. No doubt, it is not possible to eliminate cyber frauds in banks in total but it is quite possible to check them. Legislation cannot totally succeed in eliminating crime but we must be aware of our rights and duties i.e., to report the crime as a collective duty towards the society and making the application of laws more stringent to check cybercrime.