NAGPUR: With an increase in usage of following demonetisation, TOI speaks to cyber law expert about the precautions one should take while . What’s your view on demonetisation and the move towards a digital economy? I believe the Modi government must have examined all the viewpoints and taken this decision with due deliberations and discussions. There can be various alternatives to this vacuum caused by shortfall of currency notes and one of them, as suggested by PM himself, is migrating towards a cashless economy, as adopted in various western countries. What are the technical dangers of making digital payments? The main risk of cashless transaction is lack of physical intervention at any check point involved in entire process. Most of the transactions just need system generated one time password (OTP) as the only security mechanism, which can be very easily compromised. Normally, this OTP is sent on the mobile phone registered with the service provider. We have seen many instances of banking frauds wherein the scamsters have accessed OTP by getting issued. How real or big is the cyber threat when it comes to online transactions? In October 2016 itself, 32.14 lakh debit cards of various public as well as private sector banks were reported to have been compromised by malware attack and thereby causing compromise of privacy of users. This incident speaks about the inherent dangers in cashless economy. It has been reported by a leading mobile wallet company very recently that due to concerns about privacy security of the users they were compelled to suspend launch of their POS App. Cyber criminals have already made merry out of the digital illiteracy on part of online users and this is evident from statistics about exponential growth in cyber criminal activities in every passing year. This demonetisation will be an additional booster in these criminal activities and coupled with the organized cyber criminal activities and digital illiteracy there can be no stopping to the same if fast actions are not initiated by the government. How can we brace ourselves for the cyber threats that lie ahead? To move towards cashless economy at least 80% users must be digitally-literate. Users must be properly trained and educated to handle these new avatar of monetary instrument. At the same time our laws must be more stringent and police must be on toes. The traditional mindset of police machinery which revolves around geographical jurisdiction must be modified immediately and the police should be more digitally equipped. Are mobile wallets safer than say paying through a swipe machine? I do not want to take sides between the two at this point of time. There are technical dangers that face both of them and I find no reason to choose a side. Probably some people might find mobile wallet easier to use but that should not be confused with safety. While technical fears will be there, do you see any social or psychological hurdles? Fear of embracing a cashless mode of transaction is there among lot of people, because for them it is unchartered territory. Adapting technology for financial transactions also has to face the trust deficiency challenge. For those who have been victims of online fraud find themselves completely at sea and struggle to get a resolution done. Victims end up running from pillar to post for their lost money as most of the mechanisms are handled by call centres and it’s very difficult to locate any of the support centres. But isn’t it natural that every new system will see resistance at first? Yes but then there has to be a proper system in place wherein people are slowly initiated into the new system of financial transactions. Various ministers of the central government are saying that even a school kid can teach his parents how to use these digital money apps. But can a school kid identify the inherent threats involved in these apps utilization or is he able to distinguish real caller or fake caller or genuine app or fake app? Research has proved that if you force someone to adopt any technology or practice forcefully, then that person will be under constant strain of using the same.
At least 80% of users must be digitally-literate to effectively implement a cashless economy, according to cyber law expert Adv Mahendra Limaye. He also highlights that digital illiteracy has lent itself to exponential growth in cyber-crime activities. The government is working on the implementation of an e-KYC system for all transactions and will soon launch a mobile app with biometric authentication.