Pay up or I’ll tell everyone you watch pornography

Maharashtra police’s cybercrime wing is probing online rackets that are blackmailing people with claims that they possess their surfi ng details, including visits to those sites depicting child pornography. They are demanding to be paid in cryptocurrencies.

They are intimidating the victims via emails and text messages by trotting out sections of the Information Technology Act that deal with pornography. The racketeers are demanding lakhs of rupees, to be paid in bitcoins or via Dark Net channels; otherwise, they will share the information with the police.

Cops say the blackmailers are employing high-tech systems to track the digital footprint of porn addicts who are using proxy servers or Virtual Private Network (VPN) to circumvent government restrictions.

“These cyber criminals have sent extortion emails to thousands of people in the hope that they will cough up the money in fear,” said Yashasvi Yadav, Special Inspector General of Police, Maharashtra Cyber Department and IG of Coastal Security. “They scare their targets by referring to the Centre’s ban on pornographic sites, including those depicting child abuse, around six months ago. They also cite section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act and threaten to inform the enforcement agencies.”

Yadav said that his department has issued an advisory, cautioning those using VPNs to surf porn sites as it is a crime. The cops are also devising strategies to restrict the use of VPNs to access pornographic sites, he said, adding that the Dark Net, which refers to unlisted and private networks on the Internet, is used by criminals.

On October 22 last year, in a crackdown against online pornography and sexual abuse of children on the orders of the Uttarakhand High Court, the Centre’s telecom department and ministry of IT and Electronics had blocked 827 porn sites.

Maharashtra’s cyber cell has arrested 43 persons in connection with child pornography and registered 136 cases in the last nine months. “Independent research reports claim that there has been up to 280 per cent spike in online pornography surfing during the Covid-19 lockdown and some criminals are trying to exploit this trend,” a source said.

Section 67 of the IT act punishes publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form with a jail-term of up to five years. Its section 67B contains punishment for publishing or transmitting of material depicting children in sexually explicit act in electronic form.