Daily Times

KARACHI: For the first time, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Sindh, has launched ‘cybercrime reporting website’ to facilitate the victims of the increased incidents of the cybercrimes in the province.

“FIA’s cybercrime circle received 2019 complaints in the year 2017. These complaints can be divided into three major categories: 1,592 or 76 per cent were related to blackmailing, harassment and defamation through social media, 307 or 14 per cent related to financial fraud, 116 or 5 per cent were regarding threatening calls and the remaining 186 are pertaining to email hacking and spoofing,” informed Dr Amir Ahmed Shaikh, director FIA Sindh Zone while addressing a press conference held in FIA office in Karachi on Tuesday.

“Our world is fast changing and now most of the business and interaction takes place in the virtual world. Social media has surpassed any other form of dialogue as it is used for diverse purposes of communication. There are over 50 million broadband subscribers in Pakistan and the number of cellular phone subscribers may be as high as over 150 million,” said the FIA director while commenting on the importance of social media. “The same virtual space is also being used by some criminal elements to commit cybercrimes.”

This is the first time when a web portal is being initiated for the reporting on the specific complaints. “People in everywhere in the Sind province can be complained to us on our website [www.fiacybercrimesindh.com.pk].

We thought people should not be kept silent but they should come forward to complaint over the cybercrimes,” he urged the citizens. “This online complaint system is very easy and can be proved beneficial in the elimination of the cybercrimes and to help the victims of the cybercrimes.”

Dr Amir Ahmed Shaikh said that the website is primarily aimed at young girls, women and young children who are frequent victims of harassment and will make the reporting of such cybercrimes easy and help FIA in efficiently responding to such crimes.

“The complaint format is user-friendly and available in English, Urdu and Sindhi,” he informed. “FIA will be flexible in accepting the complaints directly by victims or anybody on behalf of victims.”

He further said that the FIA will ensure that confidentiality and privacy of victims is protected. Once the complaint is launched, an automatically generated message will be delivered on the given cell phone confirming the receipt of the complaint with a reference number. FIA is deputing well-trained staff to address the issue of cybercrimes within 48 hours.

Published in Daily Times, January 10^th 2018.