Online scams become a more common form of crime. Every day we come across many such news where people are losing their hard-earned money to these scamster. The scammers do not spare anyone and even many high rankings official, ministers etc fell into their trap. These scamster are smarter and hide themselves behind the fake virtual identities. They easily get away with their crimes leaving the common man to curse themselves and regret upon their foolish act. Even many commits suicide realizing their mistakes.
The problem is that many people who were scammed do not want to report to the investigation authorities. As they think that it would be waste of time or they may face some gruelling questionnaire. Also, they are hesitant to comes out in public to share their ordeal. This allow the scammers to be more confident and continuing their act of scamming people.
Taking into account the increased crimes over the year, Indian authorities have made many provisions to report the crime. The scammed person (victims) can either reach out to local police to file a complaint or simply register a complaint on the Cyber Crime Portal. Many people are unaware about the online portal; however, the portal is an initiative of the Government of India to allow the victims to comes forward and register the complaints online without much hustle. For registering the user needs to make an account which can easily be made with their contact details. To file the complaint, the user needs to follow the following steps:
- Access the Cyber Crime Portal. Link: https://cybervolunteer.mha.gov.in/webform/Volunteer_AuthoLogin.aspx
- Register yourself on the portal. Click on new user option.
- Complete the registration process, by filling all the necessary details and address.
- Navigate to the home page to find file a complaint section.
- Carefully read the given terms and condition under the section and proceeds with “I Accept” option.
- The new page provides you with two options 1) report cyber crime related to women/child and 2) report cybercrime. We need to choose the second option.
- The portal asks us to specify the nature of the crime, which we need to select from the dropdown list. We need to choose the appropriate option.
- The complainant also needs to specify the crime area, like website, or online platform likes Facebook, Instagram etc, or telephones. Chose precisely the correct option.
- After that we need to provide a detailed description of the crime in approx. 1500 words. It must include each and every detail of how the crime happened.
- Review all the information and details provided and then click on ’submit’.
- Once the complaint submitted, the user will receive the confirmation on the emails as well on the phone, along with the assigned complained ID generated in the cyber-crime portal.
Upon receiving the complaint, the authorities will reach out to the victim and help in tracing the scam path. It has been observed that in many cases a prompt action by the victim gives some positive results and the authorities able to track down the suspect. As a common man we need to develop a trust on these personal for sorting out the issue at their end. Unless and until we do not reach out to them, they were unable to solve the crime allowing the scammers to carry on with their wrongful deed.
It is important for us to be a responsible citizen and help the authorities in controlling the crimes by timely reporting. Hope it make sense and many Indians to come ahead and help in decreasing the crime rate.