Northern Province

Upcountry insight

GICUMBI - Many people in the growing economies of the world use internet to achieve their education, economic and social goals.

With the current globalization of communication technology, people have resorted to the internet to transact businesses and meet new contacts world wide. However, every new technology tends to come with its advantage and disadvantage.

Many youth around the world have been lured into parting with their hard earned cash by internet crooks scattered all over the world, who display a variety of exotic names of Universities and Colleges by convincing their victims to fill up forms through these websites in order to get  scholarships from these universities, amounting to thousands of USD dollars.

At the end of the day, the young lads are asked to deposit $300, claiming the money is ‘registration fee”. As soon as the innocent student sends this cash to the said account through bank transfer process, that marks the end of any other communication between the scholarship seeker and the exotic university.

"I could not read back from these people again after sending money to their account through western union money transfer,” said a student of Kageyo Secondary school of Gicumbi district on condition of anonymity.

In another related case Francis Vuningoma, a resident of Byumba town told The New Times of his ordeal with the internet websites, which lured him into parting with $ 500 purportedly being money to clear transit tax charges for a vehicle donated to him by a friend he knew through internet.

In developed countries, internet theft is more gruesome and has raised concern where one person assumes the identity of another by stealing personally identifiable information such as credit cards or social security numbers,to fraudulently draw money belonging to another person.

While the Rwandan Penal code is being amended to include recent crimes such as Internet theft, copy rights for musicians, artists and writers, the people should be on the look out for these unscrupulous internet thieves.

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