Two years in jail, fine for extortion using technology in UAE

Promotional advertisements for applications that claim to help users form social relationships have widely spread.

Some of them may be true, while others are designed for extortion and address users in different languages, attracting their attention with certain phrases.

Lawyer Ali Kheder Al Abadi said that the penalty for extorting or threatening a person to do something using an information network or information technology means is imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years and a fine of no less than Dhs250,000, and that the penalty for preparing, distributing, or publishing pornographic materials that violate public morals, or establishing and managing a website or supervising it, is punishable by the same fine.

Al Abadi stressed that the United Arab Emirates is fighting those who practise this behaviour in various ways, as the Emirati legislator has enacted several laws to protect those who are subjected to extortion in this regard, and the federal government of the UAE has also allocated ways to report suspicious websites and applications.

According to experts, doctors, and users, these applications contradict the customs and traditions of the UAE society, and most of them are traps for fraud and scams targeting young people in their spare time, luring them either to photograph and blackmail them or to steal their money during the registration phase in those applications. Lawyers and experts also warned of the dangers of these applications, stressing that they are a trap to lure victims, especially young people, to places that do not contain girls, but rather contain members of criminal gangs who rob the victim’s money.

Abu Dhabi Police warned members of the community against electronic fraud attempts and luring victims through suspicious links or fake advertisements spread in search engines, stressing the importance of using approved applications and urging the need to verify the validity of electronic links, and not to share banking or personal information with any untrusted party, appealing to the public not to share confidential information with anyone, whether account or card information, or passwords for online banking services or personal identification numbers for ATMs or the security code (CCV) or password.

The community was called upon to immediately report any fraudulent attempt through Aman service through the call centre 8002626, or by sending an SMS to 2828, or through the Abu Dhabi Police smart application, via the e-mail: [email protected], or the police station service on the phone.