Police are carrying out awareness drives in schools and gated communities on the city’s outskirts to make the young and old aware of the possible ways in which they could be duped while making online transactions.
Officers of Baruipur police district started an awareness drive in a school near Garia on Saturday and Howrah city police has planned one soon.
“To start with, we have earmarked 10 schools in some of the large police stations in our district where we can reach out and do awareness programmes,” said Vaibhav Tiwari, superintendent of police (Baruipur police district).
Baruipur police have launched a vehicle that is touring housing societies in their jurisdiction to create awareness. A police person accompanying the vehicle talks to residents who have doubts about carrying out online transactions.
“The use of the internet has increased in recent times in the pandemic. Students were forced to do online classes and elderly people had to make online transactions. The scope has been widened for cyber criminals to target individuals through online frauds,” Tiwari said.
The Baruipur police district includes areas like Narendrapur, Baruipur, pockets of EM Bypass that are closer to the city and rural stretches of the Sunderbans and Amta, where the level of awareness and education is relatively lower.
Howrah city police, too, has a jurisdiction comprising a similar mix of rural and urban population and is planning to launch an awareness drive for school students, said a senior officer.
“We used to have awareness sessions in schools. But everything had to be stopped because of Covid. We are on the verge of re-launching the drive against online crime,” said Dyutiman Bhattacharya, deputy commissioner (headquarters), Howrah city police.
Howrah city police has printed awareness posters, which officers said would be distributed in schools and residential buildings.
An officer attached with the Howrah police commissionerate said people who charge their mobile phones at the public charging points in Howrah station should beware of online frauds.
“This type of fraud is called ‘juice jacking’ where people who connect their mobile phones to a data cable and plug it to an electric board for charging at a public port could lose data on their mobile. We have not got any complaint of this nature till now but similar modus operandi has been reported to dupe people who charge their mobile phones from a public source,” said the officer.