57 cyber crime police stations to be opened in Uttar Pradesh

In view of the increasing cases of cyber crime, the cabinet meeting held at Lok Bhawan under the chairmanship of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has approved the proposal to set up cyber crime police stations in the 57 districts.

• Cyber police stations are already present in 18 divisional headquarters of the state. A big decision has been made to establish police stations in the remaining 57 districts.
• An estimated amount of more than Rs 1 billion, 27 crore, 24 lakh, 51 thousand will be spent on its establishment.
• Till now, an IG-level officer used to look after these police stations, but after cyber crime stations are established in all the districts, the Superintendent of Police will take over the responsibility.

What is cyber crime?

• Cyber crime is defined as a crime where a computer is the medium of a crime or is used as a tool to commit a crime.
• According to the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution, cyber crime comes under the State List.
• It involves illegal or unauthorised activities that take advantage of technology to commit various types of crimes.

Types of Cyber Crime:

• Ransomware: This is a type of ransom seeking software. It is made in such a way that it encrypts all the files of any computer system. As soon as the software encrypts these files, it starts demanding ransom and threatens that if a certain amount is not paid, it will corrupt all the files on that computer.
• Distributed denial-of-service attack: It is used to make an online service unavailable and disrupt the network through excessive traffic to the website from different sources.
• Phishing: Phishing is a type of social engineering attack. This is often used to steal user data. This includes login credentials and credit card numbers.
• Botnet: It is a network of computers that is controlled externally by hackers sitting remotely.
• Cyberstalking: This involves online harassment where the user is exposed to a barrage of online messages and emails. Generally, cyber stalkers use social media, websites and search engines to scare a user.

Government initiatives to tackle cyber crimes in India:

• Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C): This centre coordinates efforts to combat all types of cyber crimes across the country.
• CyTrain Portal: A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform for capacity building of police officers, judicial officers and prosecutors through online courses on important aspects of cyber crime investigation, forensics and prosecution.
• Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System: It is a system to facilitate immediate reporting of financial frauds and lodge cyber complaints online through a toll-free helpline.
• National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal: A platform where the public can report cyber crime incidents, with a special focus on crimes against women and children.