What Is Cybercrime? Online Crime You Should Be Aware

What is cybercrime – For those of you who work in the online industries cyber crime is very familiar. Cybercrime can target anyone, and anywhere, considering 59 percent of the world population are using the internet. That would mean almost 4.7 billion people are in danger of cybercrime activities. Victims would suffer tremendous losses, especially financially.

Technology is ever-evolving, and from that comes an ever-evolving cybercrime too. As stated from dataconnectors.com, According to the Cyber Security Breaches Surveys 2018, around 43% of businesses were victims of cybercrime actions in the span of 12 months. Although the awareness of cybercrime is starting to spread and people start to be cautious when clicking links, entering personal data, etc. the cybercrime action is still not slowing down. So, with an ever-evolving cybercrime, what is cybercrime as a definition? and can we protect ourselves from it?

What is cyber crime?

What is cybercrime? According to the Organization of European Community Development (OECD), Cybercrime is all forms of illegal access to data transmission. This means all form of illegal activities within a computer system is categorized as a crime(cybercrime).

Generally, we can define cyber crime as an act of crime which happens in cyberspace that exploits computer technology and internet network as a target. As I have mentioned above, cyber crime activities evolve and spread due to the advancements of digital technology itself.

The purpose of these cybercrime varies. In some cases, cybercriminals are just doing it for a whim. But, not little of them who conduct serious crime that can harm its victim financially.

In practice, cyber crime activities can be performed by individuals or a group of people. Of course, these cyber criminals are expert people in hacking techniques. As a matter of fact, it is common for these cyber crime activities attacks its victim from different locations at the same time.

Acts of Cybercrimes

To spread awareness, let’s take a look on the most common act of cyber crime people encounter.

Identity fraud/Identity theft

As the name suggest, identity theft is an act of cybercrime that steal the victim identity.

The most common example is online fraud(lottery). As the victim tempted by the prize of the online lottery, they would fill in their identity and credit card in those fake website. Unfortunately, they would later realize then don’t receive anything, but start to notice unwanted transaction coming from their bank account.

Theft and sale of corporate data.

Corporate data theft is similar to the identity theft but in this case, they target corporate businesses.

The cybercriminals would hack into the corporate websites and get access to illegal data. Then they would took it and do whatever they want for personal purposes (or group purposes). Sometimes they sold the data into the black market with high payment.

Malware attacks

We can define malware attack as an activity where a computer system or internet network is infected with a computer virus, or other types of malware purposely.

Cybercriminals then can exploit the computer that the malware infects for several purposes. Such as stealing data, using the computer to do other criminal acts, or just to cause damage to the data.

Several years ago, cyberspace is shocked by the WannaCry Ransomware phenomenon. This malware can lock data from a person’s computer. If that person wants to get access to that data again, they must pay some amount of ransom money through a Bitcoin wallet. WannaCry targets the vulnerability in computers running Microsoft Windows.

How you can prevent cybercrime

Cybercrime is a day-to-day danger we should all be aware of. And sometimes, cyber police are unable to help us in real-time directly. And now you know the dangers cybercrime represents, hence you should practice some precautions yourself.

Keep your software updated

Keeping your software up-to-date is always important for your data security. This is especially more important for your operating systems and internet security software. Hackers and cybercriminals commonly use known flaws inside the software to gain access to your system. An update patch those flaws and exploits, which can make the system harder for cybercriminals to attack.

Use anti-virus software 

Anti-virus software such as Avira and Norton gives you the ability to scan, detect, and remove potential threats to your system. Installing this protection in your system will help your computer and data from cybercrime in the front lines.

Use strong password

Every time and I say every time you make a password in your system whether locally or in local sites, make sure you set a strong password. You also should not use the same password on more than 1 site. A password that goes like “7%#Su”:>cegn3″ will be harder to crack than “123456789”. It’s just pure logical sense.

• Be careful of links inside your email inbox. In fact, don’t ever open an attachment and click links on spam category emails
• Do not give out personal identity data unless you trust it.
• Keep an eye on your bank account activities
• Always be aware and never let your guard down. Know that cybercrime can happen anytime, anywhere.