Official warns against careless use of Internet

DOHA: More than 70 percent of cybercrime-related issues and problems emerge from the careless attitude of people, said an officer at the Ministry of Interior.

“We have developed new, sophisticated technological means to fight cybercrimes but the problem which we are facing is the careless use of Internet and social media. What we need is the correct and positive use of these digital platforms,” said Captain Engineer Mudawi Saeed Al Qahtani, Head of the Economic and Electronic Crimes Section at the Criminal Investigation Department at the Ministry of Interior.

The Ministry of Interior made a lot of awareness efforts in this regard to fight cybercrimes before they occur, he added.

Captain Al Qahtani while speaking to Qatar TV recently added that the most common crime that the department had witnessed recently was blackmailing through Internet and social media. “People should report about such cases because blackmailing has many sociological impacts on the victim.”

“There are several cases in the world where people committed suicide because of the psychological conflict they suffered due to blackmailing and they were afraid to report about their cases. They could not solve the problem by themselves and did not ask police for help which finally led them to commit suicide,” the official added.

The problem, he said, of not reporting such cases promotes the crime as persons who commit the crime continue doing it by exerting more pressure on his victims and finding new ones.

The second crime, the official said, which is more common is electronic fraud. “The offender steals some personal information and uses it against the victim in order to get money like use of ATM cards or using personal information for other monetary gains.