GUWAHATI: In Assam, most internet users faced some or the other form of cyber attack in the last one year. This was found in a survey conducted by the Assam Police Cyber Peace Foundation (CPF) in October 2020.
A total of 700 people from across Assam participated in the survey.
The study found 70 percent cyber crimes were conducted for stealing data from the computer hardware, 71 percent were reported for online harassment, 78 percent for hacking, another 68 percent for online impersonation and 64 percent fake news report.
Internet users of Assam were found to have good knowledge of cybercrime and related issues as 62 percent of the respondents answered in the affirmative when asked about such awareness. 52 percent also knew that there are dedicated cyber police stations in Assam. However, only 16 percent actually reported such crimes to the police while 32 percent of the respondents preferred to limit themselves by reporting on the website only. Meanwhile, 22 percent of the victims chose to do nothing at all.
The study concluded that amongst the internet users in Assam 91% used it for browsing social networking sites like Facebook and Whatsapp,73% for professional use, 81% for online shopping, 74% accessed news articles, 76% for attending online classes and 70% for banking services.
Among the victims that have reported of cyber attack in the past year, 63% complained of spam messages on mail, 25% got hate messages on social media platforms and 26% got nude content like videos and photos.
58% of the internet users know better than to save their username and password for ensuring the safekeeping of their personal data, while 735 understand the danger of enabling a two-step verification option in browsers. 71% knew not to click on pop-up windows, as per the survey.
73% were cautious of using public WiFi connections without password protection and 74% of them were cautious of all public WiFi connections.
"We are really proud of Cyber Safety awareness activities that are being undertaken and our efforts are in line with the best practices in the national arena. We are also planning a Community Outreach initiative of ‘Cyber Yoddha’, in which we will be training young volunteers to work as force multipliers. Additionally, our CID & Nagrik Mitra are also working to tackle the menace of cybercrimes,” said DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta.
The month of October was observed as a ‘Cyber Safety Month’ by Assam Police.
“The Cyber Safety Campaign was a timely and important initiative. With special focus on cyber safety for Children, our collaboration with UNICEF & UTSAH NGO for ‘Sishu Mitra Program’ is already ensuring the wellbeing of kids in cyberspace," added ADGP Harmeet Singh.
Vineet Kumar, Founder and President, CyberPeace Foundation told media, “The campaign empowered citizens in not only identifying cyber threats but also in the prevention of various cyber security incidents before they happen and seek the right redressal in order to mitigate cyber threats. While there exists a high level of awareness among people in Assam regarding cyber threats, they lack the knowledge to deal with them. We hope to undertake more such campaigns in the future".
