Cyber stalker held in city

The CID Cyber crime police on Saturday arrested a computer graduate who stole personal data of 150 net users and harassed them by sending obscene e-mails and messages.

P. Venkata Sai Krishna, 28, was arrested based on a complaint lodged by one of the victims, Ms Usha Reddy, an advocate. He was staying with his grandparents at Mahendra Hills here and is jobless.

Krishna used phishing techniques to get the e-mail IDs and passwords. He designed a web page in a free-hosting site resembling Yahoo.com login page. He used chat rooms to lure people by entering text like ‘photos of beautiful ladies’. When a person clicked the URL, it would lead to the web page resembling Yahoo.com login page. The page used to show that the session had expired, following which the unsuspecting users would type their e-mail IDs and passwords. These were captured by the fake web page.

The SP, CID Cyber Crime, Ms B. Sumati, said using the data the accused got access to information like address, phone numbers, date of birth, etc. He also used to send SMSes to the mobile numbers of woman victims.

The cyber crime police booked a case under section 66 read with 43 A (getting e-mail IDs illegally) identity theft, 67 (publishing of obscene information in electronic form) of IT Amendment Act 2008.