There is a fake email going around to random people these days, threatening to take legal action against them for watching child pornography. Although viewing underage explicit content is illegal in Pakistan, this email is utterly bogus.
Upon receiving this email, we contacted sources at the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), who confirmed that this email was “totally fake” and that their cyber crime wing is already investigating it.
Spotting the Fake Elements
The fake email comes from someone’s Gmail account ([email protected]) rather than an official government email. It claims to be from the “Office Of The Commissioner Of Police/Department Of Intelligence”, but later says it’s from “Central Bureau of Investigation” (an Indian agency) Department of Research and Analysis Wing.” Apparently, cybercrime monitoring is considered “research and analysis” somehow.
But it doesn’t end there, it is also accompanied by “official-looking” documents from “National Response Centre For Cyber Crime”. Notice how it keeps switching agencies? But then it also has the signature of FIA’s director Ahmad Ishaque Jehangir at the end. Those “Certified” stamps can be grabbed easily off of Google too.
Here is what it looks like.
As mentioned earlier, it threatens legal action against you for viewing illegal explicit content. It warns you that the “Central Bureau of Investigation” has state-of-the-art data monitoring and extraction tools, implying that they can track your activity online. As confirmed by the FIA, this is completely fake.
The email threatened strict legal action against us if we didn’t respond within 24 hours. It has been over 48 hours since then and I’m unsurprisingly not writing this article from a jail cell.
The post Fact Check: Is FIA Tracking Your Internet Activity for Pornographic Content? appeared first on ProPakistani.
