In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the official handle of PIB Fact Check has rebutted the letter. It reads “Received a similar email related to a court order against your internet IP traffic ⁉️⚠️Be cautious #PIBFactCheck▶️This email is #Fake”.
What the fake letter says
Claiming to be from Prashant Gautam – Prosecutor, Indian Intelligence Bureau, the letter reads “This is to let you know of the attached court order against your Internet IP traffic by the Indian Intelligence Bureau, Department of Research and Analysis.It Is quite unfortunate that you have turned your official or private Internet into a pornographic viewing platform.”
“Our laboratories are equipped with state of the art spider/crawling digital software and equipment, having forensic capabilities such as extraction of deleted data from hard disks and mobile phones, imaging and hash value calculation, forensic servers and portable forensic tools for on-site examination, facility to extract data from latest Android or IOS as well as Chinese phones,” it states.
It also threatened legal action in case the notice is not responded to in 24 hours of receipt.
Recently, Cyber Dost, the cyber-safety and cybersecurity awareness handle maintained by the home ministry has warned about a fake letter circulating on social media, claiming to be from the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) CEO Rajesh Kumar. The fraudulent letter accuses the recipient of engaging in child pornography and pedophilia, among others.