Cyber Crime: Why Should Youth Be Worried?

Welcome to Cybercrimes Daily In today’s article I will discuss about cyber crime and why should youth be worried? I will tell you about this. Cyber crime is everywhere now, so I need to emphasize on this and the reports that I read in the recent newspapers said that a cyber crime is happening in my country every 10 minutes. So that was some specific report which said that from January to June, about 27,482 crimes were reported.

Why Should Youth Be Worried?

Look at the NCRB records in India, i.e. National Crime Records Bureau of India, the statistics clearly say that the maximum criminals are youth. So here is a question for everyone, why should youth be worried. 5,102 people were arrested for cyber crime in India, 3,188 were between 18 and 30 years of age and 98 were below 18 years of age.

This is the NCRB statistics and you go back to 2010, so the ratio is 60 to 70% of the criminals are young. I was recently talking to some school kids in a public school and a class 6 student stood up and said very proudly, I am a hacker, so I asked him what do you do, he said I hacked all my neighbours’ Wi-Fi, I said, Oh my God, why are you doing this, because my mother doesn’t give me internet.

And then I asked him who taught you this, he said Google Dad. So he watched a video, he downloaded an app and he can hack Wi-Fi easily, so I said do you steal money from someone’s pocket, he said no, I would never do that, I said why, stealing is a crime. I said I pay for my internet and you used my internet without telling me, is that okay? And he kept quiet.

Everyone Wants to Be a Hacker

And that’s the best part when I talk to young audiences. Just a day ago I was in a university in Punjab and I was interacting with the students there and they were all B.Tech, Computer Science students and they said I am an ethical hacker. So I asked him what did you do ethically, so he said I hacked a website and I downloaded their data.

So when you said that website, he said no, I saw it could be hacked, so I hacked it. So when you enter someone’s house without telling him and steal all his stuff, is it okay, he said no. So friends, when I talk to the youth and young minds, this question comes in front of you.

Nowadays Everyone Is a Digital Citizen

We call them netizen. But they hardly know what netizens and cyber laws are in the country. Hacking is fun for them.

94 lakh Stolen Online

A few days ago you read in the newspaper, someone, some young boys, a B.Tech dropout, three B.C.A. students, my special task force Uttar Pradesh police arrested them for hacking a start-up website and stealing Rs 94 lakh online, and Rs 94 lakh online. So now when we go to this cyber crime case, we face these problems and you know what cyber crime is in India, there are only two types of crimes reported there. So the victims are also young.

Misuse of Social Media

Now in my country there is a student population of 20 lakh children, so 30 to 40 complaints every minute is a regular feature in my life. We are getting 30 to 40 complaints, a flood of complaints and all of them are preying on the youth. There are two types of complaints you get, one is when you talk about cyber crime, one is social media, misuse of social media and second is banking fraud and online fraud and this is what we call cyber crime in India.

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In India It is Called Cyber Crime

So I got a call from someone, he wanted to verify my bank details, he said if you don’t verify your Aadhaar card then your bank will be blocked. So I verified my card details, then I got a message that Rs 90,000 has gone, there is a balance of Rs 10. In India this is called cyber crime.

So I went to a hotel, he asked for my card, I gave him my card, he also gave me some mouth freshener and toothpick and after 10 minutes he came back and gave my card back. The next day, early in the morning I got a message on my mobile that 40,000 was spent in Dubai. I didn’t go to Dubai in my dream.

In India it is called cyber crime and the worst thing is the misuse of social media. People don’t know how cloud works, how smartphones work. They love WhatsApp, WhatsApp is my life now.

Understand In Cybersecurity,

We need to build a strong workforce today that will build secure frameworks. So that whatever you design today as an engineer, you design a mobile app, you design a website, you design a platform or an application or a service, it needs to be secured. And how do you learn that? With secure frameworks.

So you have to think outside the box and now. So we did that traditional programming and coding with C and data structures and creating Fibonacci series. We have to get out of that now.

Yes, We Have to Get Out Of That.

And what I see with young students, everyone wants to be an ethical hacker. And what is the definition of an ethical hacker for that? How do you hack my girlfriend’s Facebook? I’m sorry, that’s not ethical hacking, that’s 3 years in jail.

Hacking Is a Crime

Section 66C states that hacking is a crime in the country, simple words, full stop. So they need to understand 3 things, attack, defense and response. And cybersecurity needs 3 things today.

And if you don’t know attack as a developer, then I’m sorry, whatever you code can be easily hacked. But if you know what the attack points are in technology, so when you frame it, when you design the software, it will be secure and if it is a secure application, no one can hack it. So today we need to give this kind of guidance to our young engineering minds and computer minds so that they can learn secure frameworks.

How Do We Protect Ourselves?

Second is defense. Everyone talks about hacking and hacking, but how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect ourselves? We need to think along those lines now. I think we all should be aware of the latest threats that are coming online, especially to our young children.

Hey, what is the Blue Whale game, have you heard of it? Every two days a news comes out and it is very scary to see that someone can force you to commit suicide or harm yourself by just doing some task. So we understand that there are some kids who are weak, but they are not so weak that someone will tell them to jump into a well and they will do it. So there is something more going on beyond that and we have to identify that.

What Is In Blue Whale?

There are servers, they are curators, they give you tasks, they steal your personal information, they blackmail you, they force you. There is no such app and software on the Play Store that you can download and I am surprised to see and I am talking about the newspapers because till date no matter what incident is reported in our country, till date nothing has been properly investigated or we have not found any forensic evidence of this game. Just the news comes in the newspapers, a child died at 11 pm and at 11.15 pm it is said that he died because of Blue Whale.

I think these people should sit in the Supreme Court. They can give such a quick verdict. The thing about five minutes is, we didn’t see the kid’s phone, we didn’t find any evidence that yes he was playing the game and if he was playing the game, there is something like that.

How Do We Protect Our Kids Online?

Kids these days are getting digitally addicted. Young minds are playing violent games and then they get violent at home. An 8 year old kid is playing a game that is over 17 years old, which is a very popular game called GTA.

Have you heard of that name? And it’s a violent game full of drugs, violence and blood and everything is inside that game and now if my kid gets violent at home and breaks the remote and breaks the television, don’t be shocked and surprised. What are we doing to the minds of young people? Are we talking about digital wellness and cyber wellness? I think that should be a part of the curriculum. And this grooming comes from the minds of young people and then it comes to college-going students as well.

Facebook Account

Facebook very clearly says that you cannot open an account before the age of 13. So he fakes his age and goes on social media and starts making friends and the kids they like start making more followers and friends. So there is a kind of competition in their mind and they start posting pictures too and then they have a problem that someone is misusing my picture or misusing my picture.

Another Challenge We Are Facing Is Pornography

And another challenge we are facing with the minds of the youth is pornography. So all these are evolving and becoming a monster called cyber crime in India. So you go back and look at all the reports, these are just 2-3 things that you will find everywhere.

So ultimately my message is very clear that I want an empowered society in cyber security. And for that, young engineers or software engineers and computer engineers need to be empowered and trained in these three aspects of cyber security, attack, defense and response. Thirdly, I want my young minds also to know what the cyber laws of the country are and what will happen if they are violated.

Governments in India, they are running a lot of campaigns where you as an individual can report any problem instead of just hacking. Because I remember there is a section of the cyber law, section 84, even an attempt to commit a crime is a crime. So a young mind was trying to reset the password of my internet account.

Conclusions

If you are alerted that someone is trying to reset your account, you should immediately go to the cyber cell and file a complaint. And the boy who was trying to reset your account will be arrested. Because section 84 states that even an attempt to commit a crime will be considered an offence and he will get half the punishment.

So if the punishment prescribed for hacking is three years, then he will get one and a half years in prison. But when I talk to kids, they don’t know. For them, hacking is fun. So the last message, very clearly, is to stay safe online. The virtual world is not a game. It is your life. Thank you very much.