Majority of calls to 1480 Helpline involve cybercrime

Cybercrime incidents, such as dealing with hacking, financial fraud or identity theft, via social networks or email, made up the for the majority of calls to the 1480 Helpline in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute.

The 1480 Helpline was set up to provide counselling and support services to children, young people, parents, teachers, and the wider community, regarding safe, responsible and ethical use of the internet and digital technologies.

Among other things, the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute said that unsuspecting citizens have been receiving video calls via WhatsApp by people pretending to be calling on behalf of the Police or who make indecent gestures. As such, it urged members of the public to be extra careful and not answer video calls from unknown numbers.

The Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, which falls under the Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth and is the coordinator of the Cyprus Safer Internet Center and the 1480 Helpline, announced the updated statistics for the 4th quarter of 2023 (1 October 2023 to 31 December 2023).

According to the data, a total of 740 people contacted the Helpline. Of the total number of calls, 564 (76.2%) related to hotline services, while 176 (23.8%) were not related to the services provided but to information, among others, about benefits and allowances of the Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance etc., it said.

Regarding the reasons for contacting the Helpline, it adds that the majority of requests were related to incidents of cybercrime (405, 71.8%), such as dealing with hacking, financial fraud or identity theft, via social networks or email. At the same time, it said a significant percentage of requests (61, 10.8%) related to issues that fall under the category of technical support. A smaller percentage (31, 5.5%) involved sextortion incidents, while “a significant proportion” (26, 4.6%) concerned cyberbullying incidents.

On the other hand, 2.1% (12) of calls involved data privacy complaints, specifically cases of callers’ information being used to create accounts or callers’ material being made public by other users without their consent. The Institute also said that it was “worth mentioning” that, during this quarter, 2.1% (12) of calls related to incidents of non-consensual intimate image sharing delivery and/or texts of sexual content via mobile and other devices. These incidents related to cases of non-consensual sharing of intimate content with third parties, also involving minors, it said.