Ahmedabad/ Gandhinagar, Gujarat, 7th September 2017
OLX, India’s number one online classifieds platform, has taken initiative to increase cybercrime awareness among different sections of society.
OLX recently concluded an awareness program for over 500 police officers from across Gujarat. The program was conducted in association with renowned cyber security expert, Rakshit Tandon. The session was held on 6th September 2017 at Gandhinagar based Gujarat Forensic Sciences University (GFSU), and was presided over by Mr. Sanjay Srivastava, Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), who is also presides over Cyber Suraksha Kawaj an initiative of Government of Gujarat. OLX was represented by Mr. Lavanya Chandan, General Counseland Ms. Ayushi Kapoor from the legal team.
In view of the rising incidents of cybercrime, having knowledge of emerging trends and tools is vital for authorities to cope with the cybercrime cases without any difficulty. The training program aimed at assisting police authorities with adequate tools for their swift investigations.
As a market leader in the rapidly evolving Internet space, OLX is committed to making the C2C trade in the country better and safer. People are at the heart of OLX’s business, and that is the primary reason OLX has decided to work towards curbing the rising cybercrime in the country. OLX has been running cybercrime awareness sessions in major cities across the country, last year similar sessions were conducted in association with with Cyber Peace Foundation, in the NCR region for the benefit of the Noida Police and the Gurugram Cyber Cell.
With the aim to improve Trust & Safety on the platform OLX India has made significant development by launching its new mobile app to make the online classifieds experience safer for its users. The new app offers mandatory registration of all users that ensures that there are no anonymous users on the app. It also offers a chat first option, which allows its users to choose chat as a preferred mode of communication and also limit the public accessibility of their phone numbers. Thirdly, it offers a hyper-local experience by only showing listings in one’s vicinity. This makes the experience simpler with an enhanced sense of familiarity to make the platform safer.
Said Mr. Rakshit Tandon, Cyber Security Specialist, “The Cyber Crime Investigation Outreach program organised today is the need of the hour. The program was very well received by 500 participants from all across Gujarat including officers from cyber cell of Ahmedabad, Rajkot and Jamnagar. Investigating frauds and social media crimes were the focus of the training. Cyber Crime is on the increasing trend and so empowering Law Enforcement Agencies is very important”
The classifieds market in India is still young and rapidly evolving. OLX is continuously working towards ensuring safety on its platform and running initiatives to make the platform and the Internet safer for the users. Under this initiative, OLX will be running more sessions with the police forces in other cities across the country in the coming months.