Advocate (Dr.) Prashant Mali's Blog

Google to face Criminal Defamation in a case filed by Vishaka Industries : Google India Private Ltd v Visakha Industries and another.  Criminal Appeal No. 1987 of 2014 Judgment date : 10.12.2019   ‪Indian Supreme Court said No Protection For Intermediary Under Sec 79 of the IT Act, 2000 From Criminal Defamation Before 2009 Amendment which was as a result of Shreya Singhal Case . Visakha Industries filed the complaint after the company said it issued legal notices asking Google India to take down the write-up. Google then moved the Andhra High Court for quashing the proceedings, but did not get any relief. Visakha Industries a public limited company, claimed that it manufactured asbestos cement sheets in all its plants in an environment-friendly manner, but was still targeted by the coordinator of the Ban Asbestos India group. The coordinator wrote a piece against the company, which it claimed injured its reputation.  Google had made it easier than ever before to dissemina...

OTP SMS Bombing : A new type of revenge cyber crime technique  by people who just get sadist pleasure. Victim‘s Mobile Phone will start getting hundred/thousands of SMS in his message box from different SMS gateways like Flipkart, Ola, Uber, Zomato, Goibibo, Redbus etc. It can be from any sms gateway via a website which has 'Forgot Password' option on it.  Earlier, culprits use to run a script which had Forgot Password URLs of 6-7 websites in it and they had to just enter a mobile number of the target victim in the software script, the mobile number gets punched on that website forgot password option for the maximum times the website allows (10 times in many cases). So  now the victim gets 10 OTP messages from that gateway/company whoose 'Forgot Password' link was used and victims mobile number was punched by the culprit several times. Now a days, Black Hat Developers had developed free bombing apps (namely : Bomb-It-Up) which do the same job automatically having a sma...

3 Nigerian are convicted for 3 years with ₹ 5 Lakhs fine in Matrimony fraud in chatursingi police station from Pune, Maharashtra  The Case Facts: One lady from Pune had opened a profile for marriage on www.bharatmaitrimony.com site. Dr Rajesh Kumar from the U.K accepted her profile, they both share their details and started chatting on Facebook, WhatsApp, and email in Aug 2015. After one month of chatting Dr. Rajesh told the lady that he has received a secret fund of ₹1.5cr and he can't keep that amount with him, so he wishes to send it to her. And as a pretext of receiving that courier, she was compelled to deposit amount of ₹38.22 Lakhs in 16 different bank accounts of 6 different banks and as per the facts, an FIR was registered at Chatursingi Police Station in Pune. After technical analysis and chase for 15days at Delhi police from Cyber Cell Pune, nabbed the accused Nigerian citizens. 1) Ogeuri Emmanual Chinaso  2) Osaramense Smart  3) Tope Oluwoly...

Memory card is a Document and Pen drive is a document  Gopalkrishnan @ Dileep v. State of Kerala, Crl.A. No. 1794 of 2019 SC  November 29, 2019 Held:-   The contents of the memory card/pen drive being electronic record must be regarded as a document. If the prosecution is relying on the same, ordinarily, the accused must be given a cloned copy thereof to enable him/her to present an effective defence during the trial. However, in cases involving issues such as of privacy of the complainant/witness or his/her identity, the Court may be justified in providing only inspection thereof to the accused and his/her lawyer or expert for presenting effective defence during the trial. The court may issue suitable directions to balance the interests of both sides. [Para 44] The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 – Section 3 – The Indian Penal Code, 1860 – Section 29 – The Information and Technology Act, 2000 – Section 2(1)(t) – Whether the contents of a memory card / pen drive bei...

1st November 2019 the legal seed of Balkanisation of Internet is sowed, a controversial new law took effect in Russia: The so-called "sovereign internet" law, which mandates the creation of an independent internet for Russia, thus creating an island in the cyber space. Is it for availability of Internet during the times of cyber threats or is it for exerting sovereignty at the cost of censoring the Internet remains to be seen.  . It was hardly a surprise when the Iranian government  also had  announced  in May that it has installed a cyberdefense shield and wants to construct “halal Internet”. This germ is in the heads of  France and Canada too and China has the infamous great firewall doing its fencing already. Moscow has just given itself the power to erect a digital or cyber fence  around its internal network. How effective is the fence and isolation only time will tell us, but the point is made and it is made legally now. President Putin signed into law...

In theory,  An  ultrasonic fingerprint sensor  works by bouncing a sonic pulse wave off of your fingertip to create a three-dimensional image. It's much more secure than optical in-display  sensors  and will work even if your fingers are greasy, dirty, or wet. A Galaxy S10 user recently got a Rs.100/-  ‘gel screen protector’ off eCommerce site.  However, he realized that after using the protector, any fingerprint could unlock the phone.  According to Samsung, the case is under investigation. Nevertheless, the company considers this issue to be related to the cost of the screen protector  Rs. 100/-  .  Samsung earlier had warned Galaxy S10 owners against unofficial screen protectors. Galaxy S10  series which comes with an  ultrasonic fingerprint sensor . While this fingerprint reader is top-notch, it does not work well with a tempered glass screen protectors. Many users can not use a smartphone without a screen protector, s...

SIM Swap Fraud Remedy via Consumer Courts By Prashant Mali Case No. 1 : Positive order BSNL Bengaluru and the Union Bank of India have been ordered to pay Rs 9.6 lakh to a businessman after fraudsters siphoned off money from his bank account in what was described as a sim swap fraud. The national telecom provider was pulled up for issuing a duplicate sim to fraudsters without adhering to Know Your Customer (KYC) norms and the bank for not alerting the customer on time. Nagarathpet resident Ramesh Kumar has been using a mobile phone with a BSNL sim card for many years and had linked it to his account at Union Bank of India’s BVK Iyengar Road branch. On September 22, 2015, Kumar checked his email to find that an unknown beneficiary had been added to his online bank account. By the time he could alert bank authorities about the breach, the fraudsters managed to transfer Rs 9,62,700 from his account. The sim card on his cellphone that was supposed to receive a one-time password (OTP...