Stay off cyber hawks: Some healthcare apps may be stealing your data
Tripura Police on Saturday sounded alert against a section of mobile apps that claim to measure someone's blood pressure and oxygen level but most likely, they are stealing the fingerprints of unsuspecting users.
When use of biometric locking systems are in- creasing day by day, this trend might land the users in a position of having no access to their phone passwords and secret codes, a social media post of Tripura police indicates. “Do not download any mobile application which claims to measure your oxygen level and Blood Pressure. It may steal your finger- prints. You may lose your money and control over your mobile number”, the police’s of- ficial facebook handle reads.
On being asked whether any such crime was reported in the state or so, a highly placed source in the state cyber crime unit said, “As of now, there are no specific complaints. But, there is a pan-India cyber coordination programme running to curb the widening graph of cyber crimes and also to sensitize netizens of the anticipated problems. Whenever such an incident is reported somewhere in the country, alerts are issued to every state cyber cell unit to make people aware of the matter so that nobody falls prey to these evil traps”.
Explaining the gravity of the issue, he said, “The cyber criminals are clever enough to hatch a new plot every time. Every single case has a different way to con and thus people can’t relate to the cases that are reported earlier”.
Referring to a recent case, he said, an educated boy born and brought up in Agartala had been conned easily. In the first attempt he was asked to pay a little money for registration for a job in a telecom company. When he had submitted the money he was asked repeatedly for money and he found out that he had deposited Rs 7 lakh so far in the accounts for his job. The boy had lodged an FIR with police after he realized that he was conned, the police officer said. A comparatively different but related cyber crime was reported at East Agartala police station.
“A girl has complained that her photos are being circulated all over the internet without her permission. Her social media accounts are hacked and she has lost access to many of her private photos. We are trying to trace the people who are behind it”, Officer-in-charge East Agartala police station.