If you want to know all about cybercrime you are in the right place. Cybercrime is a threat to the modern world. Continue reading to find more.
What is cybercrime?
When the crime committed involves the use of computer networks then it is known as cybercrime. It may include threatening a person’s or a company’s security. There are many privacy concerns surrounding cybercrime when confidential and important information is intercepted or disclosed, lawfully or otherwise.
The main motive of cybercrime is to harm the target individual or a group of people, physically and psychologically using the basic network and the basic electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops etc. You should know a lot more about cybercrime. Read on.
Types of Cybercrimes
Did you know the following types of cybercrime?
- Financial and fraud crimes
- Cyberterrorism
- Cyber extortion
- Computer as a target
- Computer as a tool
- Obscene or offensive content
- Online Harassment
Categories in Detail
Financial and fraud crimes
It basically involves Altering, destroying, suppressing, or stealing output, usually to conceal unauthorized transactions. Altering or deleting stored data; these kind of crimes are difficult to identify. Other forms of fraud may be facilitated using computer systems, including bank fraud, carding, identity theft, extortion, and theft of classified information. These types of crime often result in the loss of private information or monetary information. You should definitely know about this type of cybercrime.
Cyberterrorism
It can be defined as the act of terrorism that is done using network communication in order to cause fear among the people. There are also hacking activities directed towards individuals, families, organized by groups within networks, tending to cause fear among people, demonstrate power, collecting information relevant for ruining peoples’ lives, robberies, blackmailing, etc.
Cyber extortion
In this case, a person’s computer or phone gets hacked and he/she is threatened by constantly repeated denial of various services and then the hacker asks for money to stop these attacks and promise security. Many people get harmed by this as this may lead to loss of data and money also. You should definitely know about this type of cybercrime.
Computer as a target
This type of cybercrime is done by the people who have great knowledge of computer and can perfectly handle the various software that a computer has. They can disrupt the computer functioning and try to gain important details from the related device so as to blackmail the victim to gain money. The nature of this crime changes along with the development in the software technologies. The number of cybercrimes using the computer as a target is increasing to a great extent day by day.
Computer as a tool
Less technical knowledge is required for this kind of crime. When a person is directly affected by this, then the computer is considered just as a tool. The damage dealt is largely psychological and intangible, making legal action against the variants more difficult.
Phishing
Phishing is mostly propagated via email. Phishing emails may contain links to other websites that are affected by malware or they may contain links to fake online banking or other websites used to steal private account information.
Obscene or offensive content
Posting offensive content on the internet which can cause harm to someone’s personal space it is categorized under offensive content. The youth today is mainly involved in this area to a great extent. You should definitely know about this type of cybercrime.
Online Harassment
Targeting an individual or a group and spreading false content about them which can harm one’s reputation, this is called online harassment.
Ways to protect yourself from cybercrime
- Keep your social media on high privacy settings so that unknown people cant contact you or can’t access your details. Also, the information that you put on social media about yourself, that should not be too personal.
- Having strong passwords to your social media handles and the e-mails can help to prevent and protect us from such crimes.
- Strong firewalls to be installed on your devices in order to prevent your data from being getting stolen and also help you keep your confidential data safe from theft.
- Avoid clicking and opening of random advertisement links ad these links can contain malware which gets installed in your system as soon as you click those links and this malware can cause dysfunction of many of the features and software.
- Check the authenticity of the site before entering your personal data into it or having any kind of communication.
- Make sure that the software which your devices have been up to date.
- Keep an update regarding new security updates.
Anyone can be victim to such crimes therefore one must be very careful while using internet and make sure to keep in mind every possibility which can result in such data thefts and security breach.
Make the best use of internet and keep in mind the safety rules.
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