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Watch your wallets online: Fraud on the rise
Financial fraud tops the list of cyber crimes, and cyber-monitoring authorities note a rise in such crime in the past two months.
There have been 19 incidents of online financial fraud in the 11 months to November 30, Sri Lanka’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) said, half of them in the past two months alone.
The good news is that online financial fraud has decreased significantly from last year, when 35 incidents were reported.
“A lot of businessmen fall prey to financial fraud because they are involved in a lot online transactions, especially via email,” CERTPrincipal Information Security Engineer Roshan Chandraguptha said.
Mr. Chandraguptha said that apart from 19 cases of cyber fraud reported this year so far, his agency had also been apprised of seven scams, eight cases of ransomware installed, 11 cases of malicious software, four incidents involving violation of intellectual property, and numerous cases of phishing, abuse of privacy, attacks on websites and hate/threat mail.
He said people were unwilling to go public about being victims of cyber crimes due to the social stigma attached to being tricked on the internet, especially on social media.
In the year to November 30 a total of 2,534 adverse cyber incidents such as financial fraud were reported, nearly all – 2,450 incidents – related to abuse and fraud through social media, CERT said. In 2017, 3,900 complaints were recorded, of which 3,600 cases were matters related to Facebook.
“Young people face the dilemma of battling fake accounts on social media that are created using their pictures and information,” Mr. Chandraguptha said.
Due to extensive use of social media among schoolchildren CERT, the Ministry of Education and the National Children Protection Authority have joined forces to raise awareness of online dangers.
Mr. Chandragupta said his organisation created a programme called EDUCERT for teachers to use and trained about 1,000 teachers this year to deliver the programme.
Sri Lanka is ranked 72 out of 193 countries in the Global Cyber Security Index 2017. Sri Lanka’s overall performance to ensure secured cyberspace is rated as “maturing”, along with countries such as China, South Africa, Germany, and India.
Police media spokesman Superintendent Ruwan Gunasekara said problems arose because people treated Facebook and other social media like diaries where they write anything and post everything.
“This is a huge mindset flaw: it causes many women to be sexually victimised as well as leading to a great deal of racial disharmony,” he said.
He said the Computer Crimes Act, the Penal Code and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are designed to handle all kinds of cyber crime.