Mumbai commissioner of Police Param Bir Singh has warned people against the cyber crimes, appealing them not to do bank transaction over public WiFi networks.
Taking to Twitter, Singh wrote, "Personal information on public networks is easily accessible. Do not access personal identifiable information like banking information, home address etc over public WiFi networks."
Although Wi-Fi makes it easy to access information and do business online, it is not safe, especially if you are using it for online banking.
According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, Mumbai ranked second in cybercrime with 2,527 cases after IT hub Bengaluru with 10,555 cases.
The city saw the highest cybercrime of debit/credit card phishing and fraud with a total of 978 cases, of which 248 were online banking fraud. Online cheating constituted a massive 1,150 cases, revelled the data.
With the extensive use of the internet for banking and other activities, cybercrime too has seen a drastic rise over the years. While 1,362 cases of cybercrime were recorded in 2017 in Mumbai, the numbers increased gradually to 1,482 and 2,527 in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The cybercrime rate in Mumbai for last year was 13.7 percent, which is comparatively less considering the city's population of 1.84 crore.
According to the data released by NCRB, over 2,084 incidents had a motive of fraud, 154 of sexual exploitation, while 256 had other intentions. Over 146 cases of cyberstalking were registered last year and 28 cases were pertaining to data theft. Mumbai topped the list of 19 metropolitan cities in terms of fraud related to ATM, OTP and online banking along with cheating and forgery.
