Cybercrimes are underreported — half of the adolescent victims never report

• According to a recent study on ‘Child Safety on Children and Adolescents, 9.2% of the 630 adolescents in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NR) faced online harassment or cyberbullying.
  
• But, half of them (4.6%) did not report it to the cyber cell.
  
• India stands third in the world for the number of cyber crimes cases at over 2,900, as per the Internet Crime Report for 2019 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  
• The FBI report reveals that the most common mode of cybercrime or fraud is emails, followed by text messages and via fake websites.

India stands third in the world for the number of cyber crimes cases at over 2,900, as per the Internet Crime Report 2019 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is however based on the cases registered with the cyber cell or the police.

According to a recent study on ‘Child Safety on Children and Adolescents, 9.2% of the 630 adolescents in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NR) faced online harassment or cyberbullying. But half of them (4.6%) did not report it to the cyber cell.

That means nearly a third of the total adolescent population reported cyber crime. As per the data with RTI, 223 cybercrime cases were registered with the Delhi Police, between 2016 to 2019 — including 83 new cases last year.

13 -18 year olds are bullied more online

Children aged between 13 to 18 years are more prone to online bullying, given the longer hours spent over the internet, says the ‘Online Study and Internet Addiction’ study. It shows that one in four adolescents reported seeing a modified image or video of themselves and again, half of these were not reported to the police.

In addition, most of the teenagers are unaware or deliberately do not follow the minimum age restrictions for creating social media accounts. Facebook allows children above 13 years of age to create an account while the age cap is 18 years for other social websites.

This is as more children become active internet users. A recent India Internet Report 2019 suggested that two in three internet users (66%) in India are between 12 and 29 years of age.


“One of the biggest problems in reporting cyber bullying is that a large number of vulnerable victims don't even recognise that what is happening to them is bullying,” Indiaspend reported citing Nishant Shah, professor at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media at the Leuphana University in Germany.

“Online misbehaviour is rooted in the lack of social governance and political processes to shape and train people into recognising each other as human”, Shah added.

Emails, texts via fake websites most common cybercrime

The FBI report reveals that the most common mode of cybercrime or fraud is emails, followed by text messages and via fake websites. In fact, personal data breach has become a common crime.


The number of cyberstalking cases against women rose by 36% to 739 in 2018, shows the data by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). On the contrary, the reported cases of threatening and blackmailing dropped by 28.3% during the same period.

“Just how your bank and online accounts require two-factor authentication, apply that to your life. Verify requests in person or by phone, double check web and e-mail addresses and don’t follow the links provided in any messages,” said Donna Gregory, the chief of Internet Crime Complaint Centre of FBI.

See also:
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