Cybercrime police station finds 18 missing persons through software

The Cybercrime police station in Bangalore has managed to locate a total of 18 missing persons in the last one year, thanks to the ingenious software available with its Cyberforensics laboratory.

According to Deputy Inspector General of Police, Economic Offences, Corps of Detective (CoD) Sanjay Vir Singh, the Cyberforensics laboratory has a set of twelve softwares including the “read-notify” solution that can tell the location or the City from where a person accesses his or her e-mail account.

“Even if a person does not write an e-mail and just clicks into an account, we can track it”, Singh explained.

The Bangalore City Police had approached the Cyberforensics laboratory for assistance in tracking missing persons on several occasions. “We have managed to solve a total of eighteen missing persons cases in the last one year”, he said.

The laboratory is also equipped with sophisticated equipment like Cyber Image Backup System (CIBS), which can detect any tampering of discs and can retrieve information from the hard disc of the computer. The lab also has a mobile forensics kit, Singh added.

A majority of the 50 cases registered by the Cybercrime police station in Bangalore pertain to hacking. The rest include obscene e-mails, SMSes and tampering of the source code.

Singh said there has been a spurt in Orkut-related obscenity cases in Bangalore this year. Though cases of misuse in Orkut have also been reported from other parts, the number of cases reported in Bangalore has been on the rise. “There have been about 8 to 10 Orkut-related complaints concerning pictures of young girls that have been posted on communities with lewd allusions and a listing of the victim’s mobile numbers”, a police official said.