Dubai, Aug 28 (MOI): The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested more than 35 men working in mobile sales and service shops for blackmailing their customers, especially ladies. The arrested include Arab and Asian people. They used to copy the private images and videos saved in customers’ phones without their knowledge and used them to blackmail.

The CID had got information about some men taking personal images and files from mobile phones of some citizens and residents, especially ladies, and extorting of paying huge amount from them by the threat of exposing them in social networking websites.

Through electronic search and investigation the Cybercrime Combatting Centre of CID could identify that criminals are those working with mobile service centres. Accordingly the CID police raided many mobile shops and checked the devices as they got several photos of citizens and residents. CID arrested more than 35 people from the suspects and seized their devices. They confessed during the interrogation stating that they copied images and data stored on the phones of the customers, especially ladies who gave their phones for maintenance.

The Ministry of Interior called on citizens and residents to take caution when dealing with mobile shops not to keep pictures and videos, and personal data on mobile phones while giving for maintenance. The ministry also urged not to download any applications through shops especially programs like iCloud that allow service persons to share and access the data in the phones, as they give their personal emails for downloading purposes through which they can access to the data saved in those phones. To copy images from others’ mobile devices without their permission is a punishable crime.