55% cybercrime victims failed by police: Survey

More than 55% of cybercrime victims in the country are not being provided with the legal assistance they deserve, according to the findings of a survey.  

The survey report titled Cybercrime Trend in Bangladesh-2022 says only around 7% of the victims received desired help after reporting to the police.

The Cybercrime Awareness Foundation published the report at the Crime Reporters' Association of Bangladesh auditorium in Dhaka on Saturday. Kazi Mustafiz, president of the foundation, chaired the event while East West University Senior Lecturer of law Monira Nazmi Jahan presented the findings.

The survey asked 18 questions to 199 victims from 15 February 2021 to 2 March 2022.

According to the latest report, 53 out of 199 victims, or 26% of the victims, complained to the law enforcers – up by around 5% than 2021.  

The 2021 report found around 22% of the cybercrime victims who filed complaints with police got positive outcomes.

The latest report shows the number of female complainants is comparatively less than that of male complainants. Among women victims, only 11.06% approached law enforcement agencies, while 45.73% were reluctant to take legal action.

The report found that around 21% of the victims did not take legal action to keep the matter secret. In addition, 17% of the victims did not take any action to protect their social image, 17% were afraid of harassment, and 17% thought that they would get no result from taking legal action.

However, 7% of the victims did not take any action because the accused person was influential. On the other hand, 2% of the victims did not feel the need to take action.

The report also found that 43.22% of the victims know about the laws related to cybercrime while the remaining 56.78% have no idea about that.

Most of the participants in the research were the victims of cyberbullying including receiving pornographic content, defamation threat, threats through social media, phone, messages etc.

This year's survey showed a slight increase in the number of victims of cyberbullying to 50.27% from 50.16% in the last report.

There has been an alarming increase in cybercrimes like social media and other online accounts hacking or information theft. In addition, the number of victims of fraud using social media and buying products online is also noticeable.

The report found that 23.79% of the participants were victims of online account hacking including social media. In the 2021 report, the rate was 28.31%.

However, in the last report, the incidence of spreading misinformation through social media was 16.31% which is 18.67% this year.

In the latest report, harassment by using photos or videos of sexual harassment incidents or intimate moments has increased at an alarming rate.

The rate of harassment using photos or videos of private moments or sexual harassment incidents was 7.69% last year, but it has increased to 9.34% this year. The incidence of harassment by using photoshopped images was 5.85% last year, which has increased to 6.93% in the new report.

As per the report, about 15% of victims were defrauded while buying products online.

Most of the victims are 18-30 years old which is 80.90% of the total participants. Around 13% of the victims are under 18 years of age, 5.03% are aged 31-45 years and 0.50% are aged above 45 years.