The revolution in information technology has a great impact in our life. Its reach is almost everywhere. In fact, administrative functioning of a government, operatives of business and industries are increasingly depending on it. The technology has changed the dimension more particularly in business. E-banking is one area that has been growing rapidly by leaps and bounds. It is said that IT has reduced the cost of processing and exchange of information. The barrier of boundary and distance between places has been erased by this new technology. Financial transaction between, one corner to another corner of the earth is at our fingertips. Click a button, and our work is done. What is remarkable about this technology is, unlike others, it is not confined within the boundaries of the industrialised nations. Underdeveloped countries equally take advantage of the technology. Service deliveries are no longer centralised at banks. Easily accessible facilities like the ATMs and telephone banking have become an indispensible part of e-banking. However, new technology comes with a price. e-banking is now a soft target for cybercriminals. The Times of India reported in 2013, that the city of Gurgaon, which is canvased as one of the Millennium cities of India, had 759 cases of online crime recorded by the police. Of the total cases, 248 were related to bank fraud, making it the most common among cybercrime cases registered by the police. The police of Gurgaon had to inaugurate a new cybercrime cell in the city. The crime cell had maintained that the vulnerability of credit and debit cards and net banking has made it easy for criminals. Most of the cases are often difficult to investigate.
Identity theft is, which is known as Phising, is one of the common cybercrimes. According to IT experts, Phising is usually a social engineering crime pervasive in attacking organisations’ or individual customers’ information systems in order to gather private information. The perpetrators extract information so that the identity of the customers could be used for committing crimes, or a bank fraud, in the case of E-banking. Phising has become one of the fastest-growing threats in internet. IFP carried a news report of an attempted bank fraud, of a SBI customer from Imphal. A fraudster pretending to be an executive of the customer care service of SBI had tried to extract information of the customer over the phone. Smelling of foul play, the customer hold back from giving away the details to the caller, if not the customer could have lost all the money from her bank account. The caller was apparently equipped with computer software, as he was able to send deceptive messages over the mobile phone during the conversation. It has also been reported that some customers have already been duped by such callers. The customers realised of the fraud after finding their bank accounts to be nil. It is true that customers are given educational materials by the banks to their customers at the time of issuing ATM smart cards. Instructions are provided as safety tips for customers to keep their account safe. But very often, customers either neglect the instruction or tend to forget it. For instance, customers do not follow the basic instruction of respecting the privacy of another customer when they are standing at an ATM queue. There will be more than four or five people inside an ATM booth at a time. This is where the need for imparting awareness among the customers is seriously called for. The banks should give awareness on larger canvases which are easy to comprehend. State police should open cyber cells to mitigate cybercrimes. The criminals are already here, operating from someplace.
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