Increase in cybercrimes after more depending on the internet

The number of internet users is increasing at an alarming rate as people want everything with a click from booking a cab to ordering food online. The internet has made our life quite easy, and the number of internet users in India is 331.7 million in 2017, which is expected to be 511.89 million in 2022. With this increasing use of the internet, there is also a great threat to the safety and security of information and privacy of users. According to the National Crime Records Bureau Report of 2018, Cybercrimes had increased from 12317 in 2016 to 27248 in 2018, and by motive of fraud, numbers of cases are 15051 for 2018.

Cybercrime term as such is not defined in Indian Law. Still, if we see its nature, it is inferred that it is a crime whose medium is the internet and computer and computer networks are either targets or are used to target others. Cybercrime includes several crimes in its ambit such as Hacking, Identity Theft, Phishing, Cyber Stalking, Spamming etc. If we see, find out the basic reason behind these crimes they are: Easy money without revealing the identity because they use hacked computers and fake or stolen IP Addresses. The complex technologies and coding increase the chances of error which the criminals take advantage of. They know how to fool the biometrics easily. The evidence which is usually in the form of data can be easily destroyed without leaving behind any trace. Due to all such reasons, most such cases remain inaccessible.

Indian Government has also tried several times to curb these crimes, whether by the Information and Technology Act, 2000 or various schemes such as Cyber Swachhta Kendra or apps like Samvid. Not only by way of curbing initial stage of crime, but the government has also implemented various schemes and provision in the stage of case disposals such as separate IT Cells or Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System or whether training to police officials but still there is a lot of scope of improvement for better and proper implementation of all these schemes and legislations.

There are several other precautions which can be taken by persons or firms at their level and help themselves from getting into this trap of cybercrime such as encryptions which help only authorized persons to decode the message, synchronized passwords making it safer by requiring persons to input passwords including one-time passwords. There can also be the use of firewalls and digital signature or various steps verification. It is not the only duty of the government to protect information and privacy of individuals but also of individuals themselves needs to be aware of relation to their use of the internet and technology.

Several amendments that government can introduce to protect and increase the safety of its citizens is: Specific law about crimes such as crime related to cyberbullying, child crimes; more specialized and advanced training to police officers; special and fast track courts for these matters and there are many more in the form of restriction on the advertisement of unnatural links and other things.