Sean Patterson: Police say UK man shot dead in Jamaica was victim of ‘contract killing’ by ‘unknown assailants’

Parental control on all devices helps you filter out inappropriate search words or content, and also controls access your kids may have to some things. Last year, a 16-year-old boy in Mumbai spent Rs 10 lakh from his mother’s bank account to play PUBG. Around the same time, a 13-year-old boy in MP’s Chhatarpur hanged himself after he spent Rs 40,000 of his parents’ money on an online game. Parents need to have content control, and educate children about their digital footprint.

We must check our privacy settings while sharing on social media. Someone could morph your photo to create an inappropriate video thumbnail, and then call you to say, “Oh my God, how did your video get leaked?”. In a panic, you will click on the thumbnail, which takes you to a page that looks exactly like the Facebook login page, and it asks you for your email and your password. When you’re agitated, you may not pay attention to small details. The hacker will use this information to lock you out of your social media account, but reach out to your friends asking for money immediately.

Another scary factor is Google poisoning. This is when you try to find something on a search engine, but hackers, through what is called ‘Black Hat SEO’, have managed to put their own fake website at the top of search results. So, it may not be necessary that the first result you get is the genuine one. And if they ask you to download any app or tool, be suspicious.

Don’t trust everything on the Internet. You have to do a little detective work yourself. It’s easy to make a fake profile so you need to know how to use basic OSINT or ‘Open Source Intelligence’. For instance, when you come across a matrimonial or dating profile, try to discover more about that person by doing a reverse image search. You can upload a photo or input the URL of an image on a search engine, such as www.google.com/imghp, yandex.com/images/, or www.bing.com/visualsearch to show you related images or those that contain similar looking items or people.

You can register a complaint on https://www.cybercrime.gov.in/ or call the national helpline number 1930. The government is building a network with bank nodal officers, and when there’s any information about a suspicious account, it is frozen. But keep in mind that digital money travels fast and the hacker may have already moved the funds. Also, hackers often create dummy accounts by using fake PANs and Aadhaar cards, which can be difficult to trace.