"Cybercrime is one of the major crime we are facing today. Not only individual, every institution and even countries are facing cybercrime today," Dr M Ravi IPS, former Director General of Police (DGP) of Tamil Nadu said. He was in Kuwait last week to attend a social awareness event organised by Young Minds India.

In a brief chat with Indiansinkuwait.com Mr M Ravi IPS (Retd.) shares his views and concerns with growing cybercrime, especially among the younger generation.

"Mobile Phone is part of our body now. We may able to survive one or two days without food, but not even an hour without Mobile! And the fact is that this same Mobile phone is linked with everything including our passport, even day to day payment. This is the same phone which is very much prone to cyber-attacks if we didn’t use it with proper awareness," former DGP said.

Only thing we can do is to use it judicially. Creating awareness is what we can do. Even government machineries are helpless at times and may take a long time to trace any crime it committed.

Youngsters need to be very careful about screen time. Limit the screen time for constructive activities only. All these social media apps are not only wasting our time but also affect our health, he said.

Technology is a double edge weapon. If you use it constructively it’s a good tool, but if you are not aware of its consequences, it can be very dangerous. "Youngsters need to spend more time on reading physical books, particularly for adolescent child, if he or she is having a separate room and they have computer or mobile with internet, parents need to be extra careful about what they are watching online," former DGP, who also served as the Additional Director General of Police, Crime against Women & Children, shared his concern.

In India we have very strong IT act, but generating awareness is the most important thing we can do. It is not possible for any government to completely control the cybercrime. Cyberspace is very vast. A culprit can sit and operate from any part of the world. In India we have National Cybercrime portal where you can register your cybercrime. We have cyber police station with cyber forensic lab in most part of our country. They have tie-up with all service provider and are in touch with nodal officers of major social media platforms. Today, it is possible to track any cybercrime unless it is done from the dark net, which is comparatively difficult to track, Mr Ravi said.

Mr Ravi who handled several sensational cases during his long tenure in Tamil Nadu also warns about various dubious apps available in Play Stores. He shared several instances of various loan apps which get installed on your mobile phone when you click on any of their banners and later you turned out to be a victim of such loan apps fraudulent activities. Government has removed so many apps like this, but a total control is very difficult unless we people are more vigilant on such scams.

There are large number of instance where scammers create fake profile of you in social media and scam your friends. Creating awareness is the best thing to do in such cases. You should not do any financial transaction just simply when you saw a friend in Facebook is asking you to do so. You must aware that this can be a scam and get in touch with that real friend to make sure about the situation. "Several such cases were reported in Tamil Nadu while I was serving there. 1400 crores has been lost in Tamil Nadu alone due to cybercrime," Mr Ravi IPS, who himself was subjected to this once said. A conman once created a fake profile of this former DGP in social media and tried to cheat.

"While I was in service, child pornography was a very big problem in our country. But with proper involvement of government, we were able to control it completely. There we enforced a very strict law with the use of service providers," Ravi shared his experience.

An officer of action, Ravi went through his Civil Services Examination after years of struggle on various fronts. After getting a job in Bank, he was still aiming for an IPS career, which he started dreaming even from his school days. "I used to write my name as Ravi IPS in my school notebooks at an age when I really don’t know what the full form of IPS is," Ravi said laughingly.

Pursue your own interest, this is his message to the youngsters. "Don’t attempt a Civil Service career just because your parents are compelling. In a million people attending, only 1000s are selected every year for civil service, in that also about 150 are selected for IAS. One can prepare for civil service exams as no doubt it will enrich your knowledge, but if you really have that urge to become an IAS or IPS officer, then pursue your dream," Ravi said.

The youth should work hard. The three D's - Discipline, Dedication and Determination will take you to the fourth D, which is Destination. With Discipline you should know your area what you are doing. With Dedication, you must pay attention to what you are doing and you may need to make repeated attempt with Determination to reach your goal. Finally it will take you to the destination, but the most important factor you should not forget is your Ethics.

People many time find some loopholes to avoid the ethics. Today you may try to evade tax for the benefit of few thousand, but not knowing that one day you will be caught and may lose everything what you built up, Ravi concluded.