The internet is better known as a wonderful resource by many numbers of people. Many people will talk of the many positives that the Internet has provided and how further growth of the internet has spurred many good things. The internet has become accessible through the mobile devices making it become a part of daily life whether at the workplace or at HOME. The growth of the internet can not be said to be so smooth or so uneventful and security risks have been identified and continue to grow.
There are many dangers which abound all over the internet. Incidences of crime are never isolated and have been very common. These criminal activities are the hacking and cracking by criminals, spamming, phishing, denial of service attacks, credit card fraud, email spying, viruses and malware, software piracy and cyber bullying. These are just a repertoire of problems encountered when online and surfing the internet. These are the work of various groups and individuals who main aim is to take control of networks, user accounts, websites and any other resource and use it to their advantage and gain and other malicious damage to property.
Cyber crime should not have ourselves resigned to fate as helpless victims at the hands of cyber criminals. Instead, effort should be placed at working hard to get to protect devices and infrastructure as well as to stop the cyber attacks. The best thing about averting cyber crime is that an individual must not be a technology geek or guru to prevent crime. Solutions have been crafted to help at shutting out the attacks while some practices need to be in place so as to ensure safe internet browsing and other interactions when online. With such steps in place hackers, criminals and malware will only attack those who do not have protection against attacks and malware. This arises from the fact that hackers and criminals will always want to have it easy in exploiting people who do not have adequate protection.
The dangers posed by cyber crime are many but the most important is to keep away from the different crimes in the cyber world. We will have a look at three of the major cyber crimes which we should strive to keep away from.
Fraud schemes
The abundance of fraud schemes over the internet may see many people falling prey to criminals who craft all these schemes. Most fraud is aimed at stealing from internet users their budgets, information, identity, data and ideas. Defrauding and stealing from people has been the biggest cyber crime and this crime continues to grow as the internet grows. Fraud on the internet is considered more dangerous due to the scope to which the crime affects both individuals and even businesses and organizations. Fraud is achieved through hacking into personal computers and personal data. Data targeted is for example credit card information, social security numbers and other forms of data aimed at getting your identity or your financial details. To protect oneself from fraud, an individual has to be very careful of visiting sites which would otherwise be trouble, desist from opening emails from unknown persons and downloading just anything from the internet.
Cyber bullying
Cyber bullying happens to be any kind of harassment that is perpetrated through use of technology and especially over the internet. Bullying has been differentiated from online fighting which happens between two people via comments. Bullying happens when an individual is targeted and gets harassed. It has been easy that people hide behind electronic devices, websites and user accounts and perpetrate this crime. Harassment and bullying should be reported promptly and it is detrimental especially to the young internet users especially of school going age. Cyber bullying takes a whole new dimension since what can not be said by word of mouth can be done and said online. Freedoms and expansion of the internet comes with responsibility and this should be practiced across the board.
Sexual harassment
The importance of exhibiting appropriate behavior while online, especially on social media can not be overemphasized since even noble and harmless intentions can get out of hand. On the social media sites, friends may take personal photos and for some noble reasons share the photos with their friends. Taking a different twist, the photos could take to the internet and get viral quickly finally ending up in the hands of total strangers who harbor malicious intentions. The most dangerous people out there in the cyber world when it comes to cybercrimes are pedophiles ready to fulfill their fantasies. Child pornography, child luring and sexual harassment are the largest cyber crimes
These are some crimes which responsible Internet users should distance and always endeavor to desist from or risk facing consequences and having a deleterious impact on the cyber world.
