Cape Town - Western Cape police are cracking down on cybercriminals and have warned people against the dangers of going online, without knowing how to be safe and secure.
The warning comes as national police are in the final stages of concluding the standard operating procedure of the Cybercrime Act, which came into effect last year.
Detective Ramendran Pillay, of the commercial crime and cybercrime units, said they are seeing an increase in online investment scams, ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, romance scams, compromised business emails and money laundering, which has necessitated the warning to the public to be vigilant during online engagements.
Pillay is on a mission to raise public awareness on how citizens fall prey to these crimes.
“We buy smartphones and laptops for our family members and our children, but we ourselves don’t know how to use them safely and securely. When we buy a car, you have to make sure it’s licensed and roadworthy but we don’t do that when it comes to smart devices.
“People just think once you buy a device, it’s safe… Because it’s the best phone on the market, so I’m safe. I’m covered. But they tend to forget that there are other elements that come into play, especially when you go online, you need to ensure that you are safe.
“My belief is that yes, you have a normal life but you also have an online presence. You have things to say, an identity, photos and whatever you put online doesn’t necessarily go away, it can be found,” Pillay said.
He said there is a difference between cyber-enabled crimes and cyber-dependent crimes and people confuse being “hacked” with not knowing how to use an application.
“Cybercrime is broad term and many times people use the term ‘hack’ loosely, we’ve seen people get hacked and we try to assist them. But it’s not that they’ve been hacked, it’s just that they use different applications and they get phones that they don’t know how to use safely and securely, and they end up compromising themselves,” Pillay warned.
He added, “Our biggest problem is people are scared to report these crimes or to speak about it because they would be seen as silly or incompetent. ‘How could you fall for that scam or fall victim to that crime? But what is important is to report it so that we know there is a new hotspot online that we need to address, but if no one brings it to our attention, we cannot actively fight it.”
He said with online investigations, the sooner it is reported the easier it is to investigate.
“If you don’t inform us and we don’t work on it as soon as possible, the suspect can through another device delete information remotely and then when we get there to execute search-and-seizure warrants and seize the phone, only to find that the phone has been wiped,” Pillay said.