New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has admitted that cyber grooming is growing as one of the major cyber threats faced by children and teenagers where criminals try to sexually abuse and exploit children.
"Cyber grooming is growing as one of the major cyber threats faced by children and teenagers. It is a practice where someone builds an emotional bond with children through social media or chatting platforms with the objective of gaining their trust for sexually abusing or exploiting them," the Home Ministry said.
Being aware of this fact, the Home Ministry has come out with a booklet to educate children and teenagers to understand the cyber world better and prepare themselves to be responsible and careful cyber citizens in the future.
The booklet prepared in consultation with cyber security experts exclusively deals with factors like cyber grooming, cyberbullying, online gaming, e-mail fraud, online transaction fraud, and the safeguarding of social networking profiles.
"Our new generation is getting exposed to cyberspace at a very young age. More and more children invest time online to play games, make friends, and use social networking sites. In fact, smartphone access to social networking, online games, shopping, etc has increased significantly. Cyberspace connects us virtually with crores of online users from across the globe. With the increasing use of cyberspace, cyber crimes are also increasing rapidly," the MHA said.
In fact, the Home Ministry has already launched cyber dost, cyber safety, and cyber security awareness social media handles.
Why is cyber security a concern:
Today internet, computers, smartphones, and other communication technology devices have become an integral part of our life. Cybercriminals use platforms such as social networking sites, emails, chatrooms, pirated software, websites, etc to attack victims. Children are vulnerable to various types of cybercrimes.
According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), over 53,000 cases of cyber security incidents were reported in 2017 in India.
Cyberbullying:
Cyberbullying is one of the common cyber threats faced by children and young people. A cyberbully can use text messages, emails, social media platforms, web pages, and chat rooms to bully others.
"The consequences of cyberbullying on children are manifold. There can be physical, emotional, and psychological consequences that can not only impact the academic performance of students but affect their daily life to a great extent," the MHA handbook said.
Cyber grooming:
Cyber grooming has become a major cyber threat faced by children and teenagers. It's a practice where someone builds an emotional bond with children through social media or messaging platforms with the objective of gaining their trust for sexually abusing or exploiting them.
Online gaming:
More and more children and going people are gaming online and the number is increasing day by day. Where ever there are a lot of users on the internet, cyber criminals fund their way to victimize them. This can be in way of cheating, cyberbullying, and sharing inappropriate content among others.
E-mail fraud:
E-mail fraud is a very common and least expensive method used by cyber criminals to compromise other email accounts for personal gain or to cause damage to individuals.
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Taking to ETV Bharat, IPS Sethi, senior technical director of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) said that such a booklet was the need of the hour.
"We keep receiving complaints regularly where cyber criminals cheat people. This is due to people doing everything online these days," said Sethi.
He said that it is very much necessary for children and teenagers to make themselves aware of online threats. "Children engage themselves in online gaming which has become an easy mode for fraudsters for cheating people," said Sethi.
