For third consecutive year, cybercrime witnesses major increase in Andhra Pradesh

VIJAYAWADA: Cyber crime has continued to remain as a menace for Andhra Pradesh police to tackle as the state witnessed a 25% increase in 2018 compared to the previous year.

This is the third consecutive year where cyber crimes have been witnessing an increasing trend in the state. Back in 2017, there was a 45% increase in cyber crimes compared to 2016 and predominantly, most of them are OTP (one time password) frauds. On a positive note, there has been a 13.2% decrease in OTP frauds but its pertinent to note that it accounts to 32% of the cyber crimes in the state.

DGP RP Thakur pointed that there has been an increase in complaints pertaining to social media harassment and trolls. Police sources cited that there was a substantial increase in the spate of complaints coming in from politicians over the online harassment as well. In 2018, the cops did witnessed a capacity enhancement in tackling cyber crimes in the state where Vijayawada and Vizag got their first cyber police stations. On the other hand, the DGP distributed cyber forensic kits to police officers across various districts on Friday.

Each of these kits contain forensic bridges for different storage devices, multi-media card reader, OS Forensic, Mobiledit Forensic Express software, cell site analyser, M-detect and a USB drive having a live OS. Speaking on the occasion, the DGP said that they are hoping to enhance their performance in tacking the cyber crimes in the coming year.