Kolkata police will organise a session soon where a teacher or staff from every school across the city will undergo training on how to teach students about cyberbullies and online frauds.
Police officers dealing with online crimes and bank frauds said a considerable amount of the complaints they receive are from young victims who have either been cheated or bullied online on social media or have been ignorant in using their smartphones causing financial losses to their parents.
“The idea is to percolate cyber awareness among children to protect them from online frauds, cyberbullying and online stalking. Earlier, we used to organise such awareness camps in individual schools. But now we are trying to cover all schools by inviting one representative from each school,” said deputy commissioner (cyber crime) Bidisha Kalita.
According to police records, the number of online frauds reported at Lalbazar in the last one and a half years has increased many times compared to their numbers in the pre-pandemic times.
Covid restrictions have forced a large number of people to use online modes of transaction, which they were otherwise not habituated with.
“Such people are most vulnerable and many of them have fallen prey to online frauds by responding to fraudulent phone calls or by clicking on spy-links sent to their phones,” said an officer.
Online classes have also given children a greater access to smartphones.
All the police stations have been asked to contact the schools in their respective jurisdictions and collect the name and contact details of the person who will represent the school and will undergo cyber training in the coming weeks.
The awareness drive would focus on frauds related to Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media platforms.
An officer said, the most common cyber crime that young people fall victim to is impersonation and blackmailing through social media.
“First, the fraudster befriends the target on social media, gets access to his or her personal photographs and later uses them to blackmailing the victim by opening a new account impersonating him or her,” said an officer.
In several such cases, the victims are often scared even to report the matter to their parents and sometimes end up taking drastic steps.
“If there is a nodal officer in every school, he or she can hold counselling sessions for the students,” said the officer.