Kolkata Police launches ‘Stop, Drop & Inform' drive for seniors
Times of India | 11 December 2024
Kolkata: Kolkata Police on Tuesday launched a ‘Stop, Drop & Inform' campaign to tackle tele-caller frauds that target senior citizens. According to police, the focus of the campaign is to raise awareness amongst senior citizens about the frauds; protecting the elderly from fraudsters and improve response, detection, and recovery when a fraud does take place.
"Pronam members will be part of this campaign. Just like the school students, this time the campaign will see us come face to face with senior citizens at community centres, banks, or even public places like parks. The campaign was designed afer we found that the maximum number of cybercrimes happen with senior citizens as they lack digital knowledge. Many senior citizens know that outside calls are not to be entertained. But fears leads to them respond to such fraud calls," explained an officer.
The campaign #StopDropInform will see cops asking citizens to follow three simple rules. "The first ‘Stop' of the campaign denotes stopping before responding in any form to unknown calls. The second word, ‘Drop', denotes dropping out of any conversation that veers to being suspicious and even switch off the phone if required. ‘Inform' will mean calling the police immediately.
Cops also provided several numbers and emails where suspicious calls can be reported. The primary number will be the national helpline number 1930. Similarly, the cyber reporting portal – cybercrime.gov.in – will be another useful place to report cybercrimes or even attempts of committing cybercrime, stated officers on Tuesday. The Kolkata Police cybercrime department can be contacted at 9836513000. Cybercrimes against senior citizens who are part of Pronam can be reported at 9947795555.
The police said that since Sept last year, ransomware mails are flooding the mailboxes of senior citizens despite police already flagging netizens to be aware of the new form of crime. "There is one more change in modus operandi too. Unlike March when threats were around ransomware attacks and of stopping the users from accessing his/her stored files, the new one talks of the seniors watching hours of sexually explicit content, and threatening to report them to law enforcement agencies,"said an officer.
The programme comes in the backdrop of the Lalbazar brass asking the force to focus on early detection of petty and white-collar, new-age crimes that affect vulnerable sections of society, especially the elderly.
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