DailyPost 3005
BANGALORE SHOWS THE WAY – OTP SCAMS OUT OF FAVOUR
Bangalore shows the way not only in the IT trajectory of the nation, but also in the cyber crime trends. The nature of cyber crimes in different geographies speak profusely, of a type of digital divide in this nefarious underbelly of the IT world. A recent study in the evolving nature of cyber crimes in the last few years clearly indicates that there has been a sharp drop in phishing and OTP scams in Bangalore. The new age crimes are on the rise, with great effort made on the social engineering side and playing around with both fear and hope. Tech is being adopted and adapted to this undercurrent with perfection.
A sharp decrease has been reported in Bangalore in the OTP scams; it was 1860 in 2022, 1,334 in 2023 and saw a sharp decline further to 893 in 2024 till November, recording a decline by 51.98% from 2022 to 2024. In a similar manner, phishing also seems to be on its way out. It fell from 605 in 2022 to 193 in 2024, which shows an unbelievable decline of 68.09%, while there has been an exponential increase in cyber crimes. The money generated out of these do not match in any manner with the new greener pastures, the cyber crooks have laid their hands on.
The genre of cyber crooks have also been changing with shifting sands of cyber crimes. Phishing and OTP scams were generally done by scamsters from rural parts, and not very suave otherwise, like Jamatara, Haryana and Rajasthan. Leave aside the nature of crime, the booty has exponentially increased and so has been the holding capacity of the cyber crooks in the criminal act. It is not an off affair, one single transaction or couple of them in quick succession. Now it is the lakhs and crores game of cyber crimes. Now the move is towards fraudulent stock market schemes, and sophisticated scams like FedEx courier scams and digital arrest scams.
The number of cases explains it all. In 2022 only 411 cases of investment scams (part-time jobs, tasks completion, and stock trading) were reported. Last year, 2023 the number rose 3,754 and till November in 2024 it further increased to 5707, which makes for 1,288.56% increase between 2022 and 2024. There were no FedEx type scams in 2022, 2023 saw 403 cases and it went up to 1,417 till November of 2024. Twenty cases of deepfakes have also been reported this year, with 0 in 2022. Of the 30 types of cyber crimes, investment frauds (5,707) tops the list followed by job frauds (1,423) and FedEx frauds (1,417). Total money lost to these crimes in Bangalore this year has been Rs 1,806 crores which is more than the combined amount lost from 2019 to 2023.
CYBER CRIMES ARE ON THEIR WAY TO BEAT CONVENTIONAL CRIMES IN WHAT WE CAN CALL AS WHITE COLLAR CRIMES.
Sanjay Sahay