Defense against cybercrime: Cyberfrauds: A modern-day fact

The online ecosystem has grown to be an essential aspect of our lives in the modern day, since we rely heavily on the internet. Our dependency on the internet has increased as a result of COVID-19. However, Covid-19 also drove new users into the online without making them aware of the implications of their actions for cybersecurity.

The emergence of Covid-19 has ushered in the Golden Age of cybercrime. Online financial scams were the de-facto standard at this period. Online financial scams now take many different forms. Phishing and identity theft are two new types of fraud that prey on unsuspecting internet users and have the ability to rob them of their hard-earned money.

In 2022, the mean cost incurred by a cyber attack was $4.35 million. The anticipated cost of cybercrime to the world economy in 2022 was $7 trillion, and by 2025, it is predicted to reach $10.5 trillion. Globally, countries and their people are suffering as a result of the threat posed by internet financial fraud. According to one estimate, cybercrimes cost the globe more than $6 trillion year, and the amount is constantly rising. These numbers only indicate that the threat of financial scams conducted online will keep increasing.

Penal Code, along with additional offenses such as personating someone else to commit fraud by exploiting computer resources in violation of Section 66D of the Information Technology Act of 2000. Regulating or stopping these internet financial scams hasn’t proven to be particularly successful in India, however. Users are thus losing their hard-earned money. Online financial scams have a relatively low cybercrime conviction rates, which leaves much to be desired.

There is a great deal of difficulty in identifying, looking into, and prosecuting internet financial fraud. Additionally, India lacks a court or judicial system specifically designed to address online financial fraud. Furthermore, from the standpoint of the consumers, one of the main problems with these online financial scams is that they want their money back, and once money is lost in these frauds, it is seldom recovered. On July 6, 2017, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a notice requiring banks to reimburse the sums for any unauthorized transactions that took place on their networks. Nevertheless, banks have generally been quite reluctant to implement the aforementioned announcement and have instead sought to establish several procedural requirements. As a result, we conclude that the RBI notice has not been implemented successfully.

Additionally, many customers are discouraged by the laborious, drawn-out, and intricate bureaucratic procedure they must go through in order to get their money back. People’s faith in the system to assist in getting their money back is eroding. Such indifference and hostility will eventually give rise to more serious issues. Law enforcement organizations see these online financial scams as low priority until they involve sums of money in the millions or crores of rupees. The agencies themselves are not particularly willing to report these scams or related issues. People are now reluctant to seek the authorities because of the harsh fact that law enforcement agencies are ill-equipped to deal with such matters.

This actuality underscores the need for India to adopt a new, comprehensive legislative structure and strategy to combat online financial fraud. We must particularly speed up the processing of these cases, since India needs special courts to handle them. Encouraging banks to get cyber insurance is necessary to enable them to efficiently execute the RBI’s notifications. Additionally, the central bank must ensure that notices are efficiently distributed and complied with.

India must improve the abilities of its online citizens by educating them about recently developing scams like identity theft and phishing, as well as the essential practical precautions that users must take to keep themselves safe from falling victim to such schemes. Increasing public awareness of digital issues will guarantee that people are aware of the threat posed by the rise in cybercrimes and how to protect themselves from them.

Users should only be advised to use due vigilance while handling financial affairs online. In order to better protect Indian users from the possible damage caused by online financial crimes, we must work together. Everyone is watching the government and the corporate sector to see how they will go forward with this.