Hyderabad, March 13: Furth er tightening the rules for Internet centres, that are increasingly being used by anti-social and subversive elements for their clandestine operations, the Cyberabad police has made it mandatory for the owners to keep a photo record of all the customers.
Lack of personal details of customers using cyber cafes has been hampering the efforts to track down culprits in many important offences, they said.
It is learnt that the Cyberabad police has slapped notices on 850 cyber cafes to immediately upgrade their systems with webcams.
“We want to capture the photograph of every person who uses a computer in internet cafe.
In many cyber crimes, investigation is getting nowhere from the Internet centre for lack of details,’’ sources in the Cyberabad police said.
Citing the case of a threatening e-mail to Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University (JNTU) Vice-Chancellor D N Reddy a few months ago, police said they could not make much headway in the inquiry due to lack of user details at the cyber cafe from where the mail was sent.
“We found that the e-mail was sent from LB Nagar. However, the cyber cafe operator expressed helplessness in identifying the particular user as a number of customers visit the centre every day,’’ an official said.
The police have directed the owners of cyber cafes to compulsorily collect the identification proof before allowing a user to access the computer. Besides, they have also insisted that the centres should load a software called `blink’.
Minors without ID proof can visit the internet centre only along with their parents who have ID proof.
Further, all the cyber cafes will now have to alter the size of the cubicles, as the police decided that they should be no more than three feet tall.
Under Regular Establishment Act, all the cyber cafes have been asked to compulsorily take permission from the Cyberabad Commissionerate.
“After receiving the notices, most centres have come forward to register themselves. But permission will be given only if they fullfil all the laid conditions,’’ officials said. “Terrorists who executed bomb blasts in different parts of the country, including Hyderabad, had used cyber cafes to keep in touch with their handlers in other countries,’’ officials pointed out, justifying their stringent measures.
—Agencies