Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Stealing Internet time

As many as 200 computer-related crime cases are under investigation in the State, writes G. Anand

Theft of Internet time, mainly by hacking broadband accounts, seems to be the latest in cyber crime in the State. This year, several Internet broadband cable connection subscribers in Kochi incurred huge monthly bills. The victims of the online fraud later found that an anonymous person had been using their accounts on the sly and using the lines to transfer and receive large amounts of audio and video data.

The service provider brought the fraud to the notice of the High Tech Crime Inquiry Cell of the State Police. With the help of cyber forensic experts at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) here, the police tracked the `hacker' who turned out to be a computer savvy 15-year-old schoolboy. An official said the accused had used a specialised modem purchased online from the United States to access the broadband accounts without the knowledge of the subscribers.

In another case, a person in Kattakada had transferred a large sum of money as `processing charge' to a foreign bank account after he received an e-mail which said he had won an online lottery. Such `419 or Nigerian Scam' cases have been reported from other parts of the State. Even charitable organisations had been cheated in similar ways, the police said.

A non-resident Malayali, who had an account in a nationalised bank in Adoor, lost $10,000 when the bank authorities heeded a fake e-mail request, purportedly send by the account holder, requesting the transfer of the amount from his bank to an overseas account in Ghana.

In another case, a person lost a significant amount of money and inadvertently compromised his personal details, including passport and bank account numbers, when he visited the `spoofed' website of a multi-national firm in which he aspired for a job. The police described the crime as `phishing.' The fraudster had made the website look as the legitimate site of the organisation by mimicking the HTML code. Online fraudsters have also spoofed the websites of some nationalised banks in the country.

As many as 200 computer-related crime cases are under different stages of police investigation in the State. A majority of them relate to forgery of documents, including currency, various types of e-mail harassment, pornography, and online job frauds.

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Stealing Internet time

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