‘Keep record of websites browsed by customers’

Superintendent of Police Amit Kumar Singh has exhorted the cyber café owners to keep a detailed record of websites browsed by each of the customers in addition to their personal details.

“Backups of history record for each computer are now mandatory for the internet cafes following the introduction of guidelines under Information Technology (guidelines to cyber café) Rules, 2011,” he said. The data could be stored either as a soft copy or in hard format at least for one year.

Mr. Singh told this in a special tete-a-tete the district police held with the internet café owners on Saturday in the wake of increasing cyber crimes in the country and security threats posed by ‘anonymous users’.

The SP asked the owners not to allow any customer to browse the internet if they could not produce identity cards or documents that prove their selfhood.

Warning

Those running the internet cafés would be held responsible if some cyber crimes originated from one of their computers and they could not locate the identity of the customer who used it, Mr. Singh warned.

The police asked the owners to install CCTV cameras with good picture quality on the café premises covering the entire floor area, and to filter the sites that offer pornographic material.

Mr. Singh said the internet cafes should be registered with agencies notified by the government. Around 250 internet café owners attended.