Action taken on only five per cent of complaints filed. STOCK IMAGE
Almost 98 per cent of the complaints were registered by women, 50 per cent of which were related to social media.
The data was shared by experts on Cyber Crime from NR3C unit of FIA in a session on, ‘How to protect yourself from online harassment’ at the Children’s Literature Festival held on Thursday at Lok Virsa.
Hassan Ali, one of the experts on cyber crime, stated that the number of complaints lodged in the past seven years is too low because of the lack of public awareness. He explained that FIRs were lodged for only five per cent of the complaints because people lacked information on the subject.
Sharing details of the complaints he said majority of the complaints were registered by women and half of them were based on a number of issues related to Facebook.
“Women feel insecure while registering complaints because they feel they might face backlash from the person against whom they had registered the complaint,” he said.
He said that in the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of social media users in Pakistan but unfortunately moist of them are unaware of digital security.
Another expert on Cyber Crime from NR3C unit, Aoun Abbasi, while sharing some tips to avoid becoming victim of cyber crime said that there was a need to frequently change passwords for social media accounts.
“People should avoid sharing their social media account passwords with friends or give them access to personal information,” he suggested.
Abbasi further said that tracking, hacking, ATM tampering, calls, SMS, or phishing emails seeking financial assistance or announcing the user as a winner of some cash amount among others falls under cyber crime.
“People should avoid replying to such emails, calls or SMS,” he warned.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 2nd, 2015.
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