Government taking steps to prevent online frauds: Minister

The government is taking steps to prevent people from becoming victims of online frauds, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs G. Krishan Reddy informed Parliament on Tuesday.

In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Reddy said that the government has constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Phone Frauds with stakeholder organisations like the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the Department of Financial Services, Department of Telecommunication, Reserve Bank of India and law enforcement agencies as its members.

"FCORD-FICN Coordination Agency has been designated as Central Nodal Agency for this purpose and ADGP/IGP Crime in each State/UT is the State Nodal Officer," the Minister said.

In a bid to create more awareness regarding these online frauds, the government has issued advisories and alerts and has been training law enforcement personnel for the same, Reddy said.

"Steps have been taken to spread awareness about cyber crimes, issue of alerts/advisories, capacity building/training of law enforcement personnel/prosecutors/judicial officers, improving cyber forensics facilities, among others in association with police departments in different States/Uts," he said.

"An advisory dated February 12, 2018, was issued on 'steps to check phone frauds' to all state governments/UT administrations, which is available at www.mha.gov.in," he added.

Referring to the measures taken by the Centre to ease complaint filing in cyber crime cases, Reddy said: "The Central Government has also launched the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, www.cybercrime.gov.in to enable complainants to report complaints pertaining to all types of cyber crimes, including net and online frauds."

As per National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 3,466 and 3,353 cases of online frauds were registered in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The NCRB started to collect data separately about online banking frauds since 2017.

( With inputs from IANS )