Kerala Cyber Police traced a Missing Person

The Kerala State Cyber Police have successfully tracked a missing person solely with the help of Internet. A 33-year-old man, who was missing for the past 12 years, has been traced by Kerala Cyber Police after tracking his activities on an Internet social networking Site. This was the first case in the country where a missing person was tracked down with the help of Internet.

The Cyber Police, Thiruvananthapuram, which tracked down Jimmy Koruth, a then final-year degree student from Pandalam who went missing since November 1998. A man missing case was registered at the Pandalam Police Station. In January 2010, one of Jimmy’s relatives came across an Orkut profile named after Jimmy. The information was passed on to the Pandalam police immediately, which, in turn, handed over the case to the Cyber Cell.

The Cyber Cell contacted Google International in the US for tracking Jimmy’s email details and found out that the profile was created at a cyber cafe in Chennai in October 2008. The police obtained Jimmy’s address from the identity proof he had given in the cyber cafe. His father V.V.Koruth identified him from the images recorded by the security camera at the cafe.

Cyber crimes have been steadily on the rise in Kerala and the numbers may cross 50,000 this year (2010) said by Mr. Jacob Punnoose IPS, Kerala DGP recently.

Social Networking - Safety Tipsp to protect yourself

Social networking Web sites like Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live Spaces are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.

As the popularity of these social sites grows, so do the risks of using them. Hackers, spammers, virus writers, identity thieves, and other criminals follow the traffic.

The following tips are helpful to protect from cyber criminals when you use social networks.

1. Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social Web site. Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages. (For more information, see Approach links in e-mail with caution.)

2. Don't trust that a message is really from who it says it's from. Hackers can break into accounts and send messages that look like they're from your friends, but aren't. If you suspect that a message is fraudulent, use an alternate method to contact your friend to find out. This includes invitations to join new social networks.

3. To avoid giving away e-mail addresses of your friends, do not allow social networking services to scan your e-mail address book. When you join a new social network, you might receive an offer to enter your e-mail address and password to find out who else is on the network. The site might use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even everyone you've ever sent an e-mail message to with that e-mail address. Social networking sites should explain that they're going to do this, but some do not.

4. Type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser or use your personal bookmarks. If you click a link to your site through e-mail or another Web site, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen.

5. Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves might create fake profiles in order to get information from you. This is known as social engineering.

6.Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. You will be providing personal information to this Web site, so use the same criteria that you would to select a site where you enter your credit card.

7. Assume what you write on a social networking site is permanent. Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print the information or save it to a computer.

8. Be careful about installing extras on your site. Many social networking sites allow you to download third-party applications that let you do more with your personal page. Criminals sometimes use these applications in order to steal your personal information. To download and use third-party applications safely, take the same safety precautions that you take with any other program or file you download from the Web.

9. Think twice before you use social networking sites at work. For more information, see Be careful with social networking sites, especially at work.

10. Talk to your kids about social networking. If you're a parent of children who use social networking sites, see How to help your kids use social Web sites more safely.

Single password for online accounts are more risk

Those who use the same password for online accounts viz. email, e-banking, shopping accounts, are more at risk from online fraud or identity theft. The popularity of social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, etc are making life easier for online criminals.

A new survey by computer security firm McAfee, has revealed that as many as 16 percent of people used the same password for online accounts, while a whopping 41 per cent never changed their passwords.

Most users post personal details commonly used as passwords on their pages, such as their educational history, names of pets and favorite football team, wife name, children name, favorite hero,etc are common sources for a password.

According to a report by the Daily Telegraph, online banking fraud rose by 44 per cent last year to 33.5 million pounds in the UK, while Internet shopping fraud amounted to 155 million pounds. (ANI)

In India, online crimes are increasing tremendously because of the popularity of social networking sites and poor awareness of security measures.

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