Why people are afraid of administration in cyber fraud?

Scamsters targeted individuals and threatened them with “digital arrest”, in multiple occasions pretending that they were from various authorities, such as the police, the securities market regulator, or the narcotics squad. The targeted individuals are then induced to clear out their bank accounts and in some cases transfer them into crypto currency wallets.

Even those who are relatively digitally literate have been victimised by these fraudsters.

Individual authorities, such as the banking regulator, may not have the capacity to track down the perpetrators of such crimes. Many of them are beyond India’s borders, with countries in Southeast Asia being particular hot spots. The fundamental responsibility for preventing such crimes and for bringing the criminals to justice rests with the state, and it cannot avoid that function.

Another example of this is visible in the epidemic of hoax bomb threats that has hit India’s civil aviation sector during the busy season prior to Diwali. More than 100 such threats have been issued against various flights in just a few days. This has overwhelmed airport security and caused chaos at multiple airports.

But the initial approach of the authorities was to blame the social media sites on which the hoaxes were appearing. If these sites were failing to co-operate with investigations, and not providing IP addresses behind posts when requested by the police, it is one thing. But to expect them to do the work of the police is quite another matter.

For many authorities – whether financial regulators or those in charge of civil aviation, and even in some cases the local police – digital crime is a new frontier. It is natural that they may not have the expertise or the experience required.

But such capacity then must be created, perhaps at the federal level, in order to be shared with the authorities that require it. If cyber scammers and digital hoaxes have greater capabilities than earlier, then the authorities must increase capacity to match.

As for the fears of “digital arrest” the Indian administration should also ask itself why such threats are so easily believed.

Why has fear of the police and of draconian laws become so widespread that scammers can easily take advantage of it to  terrorise innocent people?