more-in The growth in cyber crimes has been high in the last three years with the Visakhapatnam city alone registering close to 500 such cases per annum, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) A.R. Damodhar has said, attributing it to the carelessness of people while doing digital financial transactions. Speaking at a seminar on cyber crime organised by Andhra Pradesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry Federation (APCCIF) here on Wednesday, Mr. Damodhar said people were easily falling prey to the tricks of fraudsters and sharing the confidential details pertaining to debit and credit cards, along with OTPs and PINs. Confidential details “If people become cautious and restrain themselves from sharing their OTPs or other personal confidential details to fraudsters, the cyber crimes can be controlled. People must realise that none wins a lottery from out of the blue and no bank asks their customers to furnish confidential details over phone. But most of the time, greed prevails over people and they get trapped by fraudsters,” explained Mr. Damodhar. Cracking cyber crime is a Herculean task, he said, as fraudsters can commit a crime using cellphones from a distant lands such as foreign countries like Nigeria. “Very often, we find the investigation leading to a blind alley,” he said. Acquiescing with the DCP, CTO of Tevel Cyber Corps, Chennai, Harish Ramani, said the weakest link in cyber crime is people who account for 89% of the crime, followed by technology 8 % and process 3%. Illegal data mining According to Mr. Harish, huge personal data are being downloaded, mined and stored in big database by hackers in East European countries and breakaway republics of Russia. “The data are being sold for a price. It is not only from computer that data can be stolen, but even from cellphones. One should be aware of how to use smart gadgets,” he said. Further, he suggested that people should regularly update the firewalls and protection system in their PCs, laptops and cellphones. “It is necessary that the cookie files are deleted after visiting an e-commerce site as the hackers get most of the details from the cookie folders,” he said. M. Srikanth from Academy of Robotics said data could be hacked from any type of smart devices including TVs and refrigerators too. Anirudh Sigh, COO of Raheja QBE, spoke about insurance solutions for cyber crime. AP Chamber of Commerce and Industry Federation president P. Krishna Prasad, vice-chairman K. Kumar Raja and M. Sudhir also spoke.

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