Zaky Pawas – With the number of Internet users across the country continuing to rise rapidly, the Jakarta Police revealed the incidence of Internet-related crimes in the city last year had more than doubled.
Sr. Comr. Hermawan, speaking to journalists at a news conference on Friday, said the cyber crimes division recorded 242 Internet-related crimes in 2010 compared to the 117 cases reported the previous year.
The crimes, he said, ranged from scams to defraud people of money to soliciting prostitution and defamation. Online scams recorded the biggest increase last year, with 113 complaints lodged in 2010, up from 40 in 2009.
Police have found that scams were usually conducted via online shopping Web sites, through e-mails or social networking sites such as Facebook and online messaging services. Popular targets were online dating and classifieds sites.
The public has been asked to exercise caution when conducting online transactions and to thoroughly research which Web sites were fake or had bad reputations from other users.
"Don't trust people who are trawling dating Web sites claiming to be looking for partners. It could just be a cover to try to scam you out of your money," Hermawan said, adding that women and children were most often found the victims of online scams because "they are easily influenced psychologically."
Hermawan said police had also received a significant increase in reports about defamation, totaling 87 last year compared to 43 in 2009.
"Although it happens online, it can have a negative impact," he said. "People feel their reputations have been tarnished in front of a wider audience."
Online defamation is specifically dealt with in the 2008 Information and Electronic Transactions Law (ITE), which carries a punishment of up to six years in jail or a fine of up to Rp 1 billion ($110,000).
Meanwhile, no online prostitution rackets were uncovered by police in 2009, while two cases were recorded in 2010. "As for 2011, we have already received one report about prostitution being solicited online," Hermawan said, adding that police would continue to monitor online prostitution syndicates as well as trafficking rings operating on the Internet.
"These cases must be watched closely as the victims are usually women and children," he said.
Hermawan said as technology continued to develop and Internet access became more widely available, the number of Internet-related crimes would also increase.
As an example, he cited the growing popularity of Facebook, a social networking site that is used by more than 32 million Indonesians. "It has even reached people in small villages," he said.
Hermawan said that while he could understand people wanting to make new friends through the site, he warned that not everybody could be trusted. "There have been cases of teenagers running away with people that they met through Facebook," he said.
The police are planning to release a list of Web sites found to be operating scams and also provide information for parents about safe Internet use.