Surge puts SA in top six countries for cyber crime

WITH the internet becoming fertile ground for cyber criminals, private investigators warn that fraudsters are increasingly preying on civilians, due to the lack of attention given to card scams and identity theft cases.

This comes after cyber security firm Surfshark revealed that South Africa ranked sixth in the world with cyber crime incidence, rising from 11.8 cyber crime victims per million internet users in 2016 to 14.1 victims per million in 2019, and 50.8 per million users in 2020.

Povilas Junas, research project manager at Surfshark, said since Covid-19, there’d been a detection mechanism, that found that in 2019, the number of breached users in South Africa had increased by a striking 490% compared to 2018, an increase that might have led to cybercrime growth in 2020 as breached data is often used to commit further crimes such as phishing, government impersonation scams, or identity theft.

“New technology makes it easier to commit scams and fraud, especially in a country where the population is not necessarily ‘tech savvy’, and businesses often do not have the money to set up systems to protect themselves from economic fraud or cyber crime,” said Lancaster.

Willem van Romburgh, a private investigator, said that in recent years, SAPS officials had not giving cyber crime the urgent attention it deserved, leading to more efforts being put into who is targeted next.

“I am beyond fed up. Whenever we come to specific police stations, we get attitude and nobody to assist us. When we complain to the head office in Pretoria, they interfere, and for a day or two, the local police station seems to be doing their work. Not too long after that, the case is closed again. Scammers take note of this and step up their efforts. We read daily how much money is lost due to online scams and the reason is that the suspects never get arrested.

“I have a client in Riversdale, an abattoir, who supplied meat to the value of around R500 000 to someone pretending to be a good businessman. We compiled the case docket and wanted to prove contraventions of the Companies Act. They have since closed the case docket, saying that the client must issue summons.

“The suspect has more debt than you can imagine and has over the years gone around running up debt and opening new companies. Another example of this is a case I worked on in the same area, where the client was scammed out of R110 000. We did the investigation and traced the suspect to a Joburg address. Instead of arresting her, the police remained silent,” said Van Romburgh.

Southern Cape police spokesperson Sergeant Chris Spies said the investigation into the latter case was at an advanced stage, and the matter would be submitted to the National Prosecuting Authority for a decision upon conclusion of the police probe.

National police spokesperson Colonel Athlenda Mathe said cyber crime cases were of the utmost importance to the SAPS, and that there was a dedicated team looking into combating these crimes around the country.

SA Banking Risk Information Centre CEO Nischal Mewalall advised that creating awareness around the crimes and implementing smarter robust processes to authenticate details was the best way to go.

“Customers should check that they are on an authentic/real site before entering any personal information. If they think that the device might have been compromised, they should contact the bank immediately.

“Often, creating a complicated password that is not easy to decipher and change helps, and customers need to be wary of unfamiliar e-commerce sites, especially if they do not redirect them to confirm their transaction via the bank’s 3D secure page or via the bank’s mobile app before payment is made,” said Mewalall.