DUBAI // Police have urged the public to come forward with cyber blackmail complaints, because they believe the real number of cases exceeds those registered with authorities.
The appeal was part of a campaign launched by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and Dubai Police on Monday, to spread awareness about social media privacy settings and to teach schools and parents about cyber blackmail.
Dubai Police registered 73 offences of cyber extortion last year, compared with 59 in 2013. Initial complaints to police rose to 212 from 80 cases in 2013.
In most cases, the victims were coerced into releasing photographs or video of a sexual nature. Social media websites were also monitored for offensive language.
“We have an alert system against offensive language and bad behaviour on social media,” said Saeed Al Hajiri, the director of the anti-cyber-crime department at Dubai Police.
“We can find out the source of abuse and defamation and store it until we track the criminals.
“People suffer because of extortion. This number is not the real figure; it is only what is reported to us. There are many more cases, but with the campaign we want people to know extortion is a criminal act and they can come to us.”
Mr Al Hajiri said: “The UAE’s law No 5 of 2012 covers these cases and can lead to up to 10 years in prison.
“Many criminals are outside the UAE’s borders but they use social media to identify victims here and make them do bad activities on screen, like send photographs with sexual material, and then blackmail them.”
The victims range in age from teenagers to older adults. In a recent case, a 13-year-old pupil was the victim of online bullying by another pupil from her school. Mr Al Hajiri said: “We work with intelligence authorities and governments across borders to arrest offenders.
“Age does not matter and there was a higher percentage of photographic blackmail of women in 2013 but, lately, men are found in these cases.”
The TRA also revealed that there were 700 government and private websites being monitored in the UAE.
“This is live monitoring against hijacking and hacking that targets government websites,” said Gaith Al Mazaina, TRA’s acting manager for security quality services. “In some cases we coordinate with security authorities or the police of other countries. The Al Ittihad website has come under this now and is being monitored.”
The website of The National’s Arabic-language sister paper was briefly hacked on February 13 by an organisation called the Youth of Islamic Caliphate.
Mr Al Hajiri said: “We are committed to deal with cases privately and securely for the victims.”
He said authorities would also remove offensive websites or derogatory pages.
The campaign will urge caution while sharing data and photographs on the internet, reaching out to young people as well as parents. It will explain how to secure email and social media accounts, and will also provide solutions for data loss.
rtalwar@thenational.ae
