Apropos the report “Cyber crime is now a booming industry”(January 23), the Reserve Bank of India recently published data on retail electronic payments in 2010-11 that show that the total value of electronic transactions almost doubled that of the previous year. Electronic transactions, especially in the banking space, have increased owing to the changing banking habits of Indians. The convenience and ease that come with it have motivated customers to increasingly resort to electronic banking.
With complaints of online financial fraud rising, banks have are beginning to send emails to their customers warning them about sharing information. Even the use of debit and credit cards at ATMs is vulnerable to cloning, a cyber practice to copy a card’s data. Although fighting ever-increasing cyber crimes boils down to the basics of security, internet security solutions firms themselves have warned of the futility of certain spurious security systems. The joke among cyber traders is that anti-virus software firms themselves create viruses to promote their products!
K V Rao Bangalore
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