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Cyber-crime prevention

Cyber crime is any criminal activity that involves a computer, networked device or a network. While most cyber crimes are carried out in order to generate profit for the cyber-criminals, some cyber crimes are carried out against computers or devices directly to damage or disable them, while others use computers or networks to spread malware, illegal information, images or other materials. Some cyber crimes do both Some scammers target computers to infect them with viruses, malware such as stolen credit cards, identity theft, phishing, and so force. scammers can steal your online information by malware or virus. The U.S. Department of Justice divides cyber crime into three categories: computing device is the target, for example, to gain network access; computer is used as a weapon, for example, to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack; and crimes in which the computer is used as an accessory to a crime, for example, using a computer to store illegally obtained data. Common types of cyber crime include hacking, online scams and fraud, identity theft, attacks on computer systems, and illegal or prohibited online content.Internet fraud is a big issue in recent years. The hackers sometimes can even invade National Security Agency. A group called“Shadow Brokers” once stole data from National Security Agency, and caused some bad effects. Therefor, Solving this problem is everyone’s concern. People who use internet are potential victim to scammers. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations, two-thirds of electronic spies cases can be traced back to phishing. Cyber criminals are more advanced than ever. Learn about the history of cyber crime and find out how cybercrime first started and evolved – and most importantly – how to protect yourself from it.

history of Cyber-crime

The first instances of cyber crime were committed before the Internet even came into existence and involved.[1] The first major wave of cyber crime came with the proliferation of email during the late 80’s. It allowed for a host of scams and/or malware to be delivered to your inbox. The next wave in the cyber crime history timeline came in the 90’s with the advancement of web browsers. The first large scale attacks were first seen in 1989 when $70 million was stolen from the First National Bank of Chicago. This shocked the world and triggered the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to be passed as law in the UK. This was a big step in attempting to halt cyber crime. In 1990, during a project dubbed Operation Sun devil, FBI agents confiscated 42 computers and over 20,000 floppy disks that were allegedly being used by criminals for illegal credit card use and telephone services. Cyber crime really began to take off in the early 2,000’s when social media came to life. The surge of people putting all the information they could into a profile database created a flood of personal information and the rise of ID theft. There were including accessing bank accounts, setting up credit cards or other financial fraud. The experts had varying opinions about the likely extent of damage and disruption possible at the nation-state level. Some expect that opponents of the political status quo in many regions of the world will work to implement cyber attacks against governments or other entrenched institutions. Some observed that the Internet’s expansion will multiply vulnerabilities of all types, even inside one’s home. Joe Kochan, chief operating officer for US Ignite, wrote, “Cyber attacks will become a pillar of warfare and terrorism between now and 2025. So much of a country’s infrastructure—commerce, finance, energy, education, health care—will be online, and gaining control of or disrupting a country’s online systems will become a critical goal in future conflicts.”

Phishing Scams and Telephone Scams

Phishing scams are typically fraudulent that email messages is seemingly from legitimate enterprises such as your college, your bank or your insurance company. Scammers will make the email look like from a trusted site. Phishing is someone uses some sorts of electronic communication to scam your sensitive information such as money, propriety, and access something like your passwords, or to convince you to install their malware. Scammer most likely ask you to fill out some details about your information in order to refresh their systems; sometimes they may even ask you to fill out a survey as you have the chance to win a prize at the end. But the result is scammers can get access to your email address, phone number and even more. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques being used to deceive users. Users are often lured by communications purporting to be from trusted parties such as social web sites, auction sites, banks, online payment processors or IT administrators. There are some examples methods that scammers usually use to get access to steal your information. They will pretend to be a customer service from Amazon, or UPS etc. When they get your trust, then they will tell you it's urgent, you need to verify your account information as quick as possible. There are some phishing that easy to recognize, for example, some emails or phone calls proclaim that you have won an iPhone, a lottery, or some other lavish prize. It's likely fake information from scammers even though it seems very true. Sometimes a phisher will direct you to a real company’s, organization’s, or agency’s Web site with a pop-up screen that requires you fill your personal information in that pop-up screen. So, beware of pop-up screens, never enter your personal information in a pop-up screen in order to protect your account safe. In some cases, phishers will utilize a vulnerability on a banking site to gain victims money. Chase Quick Pay is a way to send and receive money between friends. And It's a free money transfer service that functions quickly without any complicated requirements. Because of simplicity, the scammer can take advantages from that. because It usually takes 1 to 2 business days for us to receive the money from the sender's bank. So, the scammers can defraud victims during the period of this time. A scammer can pretend to be a professor to defraud those students who want to save money. The fake professor just charges a small amount of money to take his/her class which very cheaper than taking a regular class in any college or university. It sounds fake and suspect, and it's hard to get trust from students just because of its cheaper tuition. However, this kind of scammer promises students to transfer money to them first to get their trust; it's an unusual way, how could a stranger sends money to a student whom is just interested in taking his class. Needless to say, his purpose is to get students' trust, he can take advantages of them as long as students trust him. After the student received money, (the transaction was pending actually, but the student didn't noticed that) he required the students to pay their tuition, the students resolutely sent the tuition to that fake professor because they mat think that the professor was trusted. Unexpectedly, the money would be gone several days later from students' account, and the fake professor was out of touch. The reason was that scammer canceled his transaction after he receives the tuition because the transaction was pending, but the victim didn't notice that. This fraudster utilized bank vulnerability to earn money from victims who don't exactly understand the policy of online bank.

Telephone Scams are more generally communications fraud, the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers. Scams can come through phone calls from real people, robocalls, or text messages. They may also offer you money through free grants and lotteries. Some scammers may call with threats of jail or lawsuits if you don’t pay them. Police in Orkney has warned about the dangers of online and telephone fraud after revealing islanders have had an estimated £350,000 stolen in 2018 . A new kind of phone scam comes up called "Neighbor Spoofing" Scammers should first need people to answer their calls before they can steal information. Scammers should first need people to answer their calls before they can steal information. So Neighbor Spoofing deceives a person with false IDs whom they think they know the locals neighbors, etc. According to experts, this may interest someone just enough to answer their phone, so that they can take advantage of people who are answering their phones.

Avoid Phishing

Users can't completely stop cyber crime, but we can improve our awareness of that.The first thing is to remember that companies don't use email to require your personal and financial information. If you are suspicious of an unfamiliar email, the best way is to directly contact with the company. Scammers typically work with common substitutions such as O instead of zero, 1 instead of l, and 8 instead of B. Never provide it in response to an email, a pop-up, or a website you've linked to from an email or web page. Usually, a site requiring confidential information should have the security certification, so notice the sites address with HTTPS.

The second is to remember that oftentimes, scammers offer good promise that seems too good to be true, so don’t believe promises of easy money. If someone claims that you can earn money with little or no work, get a loan or credit card even if you have bad credit, or make money on an investment with little or no risk, it’s probably a scam. Make it a habit to check the address of the website. A secure website always starts with “https”. Using antivirus software to prevent phishing attacks and users should update the programs regularly. Antivirus software scans every file which comes through the Internet to your computer. It helps to prevent damage to your system. However, Antivirus software sometimes can't exactly block all phishing emails, it'll just give you a warning. Therefore, improving safety awareness is a crucial factor to protect your account safer, and remember that phishing scammers need your information or someone else’s, quickly – or something bad will happen. Overall, don't click any links in emails before you make sure that is credible, especially don't click website link in an email which you are not familiar with. Two-factor authentication is also a good way to protect your information, because authentication requires both your password and an additional piece of information to log in to your account. Even if your password is compromised, scammers are not easy to log in your account as yourself, because the second piece will send your phone a random number as a confirmed code, other people can't log in your account unless you import the confirmed code.

Never use public, unsecured WiFi for banking, shopping or entering personal information online, even if the website is secure. There are much public WiFi In public libraries or some schools,free WiFi is almost widely avoidable today such as in MacDonald's, Walmart store and public libraries; but the key word here is “Unsecured WiFi”. 60% of American consumers who believe that their information is safe when using public WiFi, only 50% believe that they bear any personal responsibility for ensuring that their data is secure. Therefore, making sure the public WiFi is secure before login can protect you from phishing by cyber-criminals who may have set up a fake wireless access point. Keep Browser Up to Date is also a good way to protect online users safety because they are released in response to the security loopholes that phishers and other hackers inevitably discover and exploit

Overall, Internet users need to do is make sure the website is safe, and turn on two-factor authentication If the account supports it. Don’t provide any credit card or bank account number unless paying for something and know who recipient really is. Remember a legitimate company and charity will be happy to give its customers enough time to make decisions. If a caller sounds very anxious, whoever answer the phone needs to keep cautions of that because the caller probably wants to steal one's information soon. When a calling intentionally to makes a sense of crisis,whoever answer the phone needs to stop and think of that because some criminals use psychological tactics to defraud money.

Many criminals defrauded by phone call. Avoid answering calls from unfamiliar phone numbers, even if they appear to be local. If it’s important, the caller will leave a message. If there is a sense of urgent from any person, slowing down and be aware of that because scammers want victims to act first and think later. Never get into sweepstakes/foreign lotteries. Suppose you won the prize they will ask you to pay “customs duties,” “taxes” or “fees” first to get to the prize. They could trap you, irrespective of any promises or guarantee. So don't trust any free lunch easily. Hang up on all robocalls, and do not press any buttons to speak with an operator, or any buttons to be removed from any list. This could result in more robocalls. the person who called must identify themselves first is not a person who answered. If someone is making a call but avoid telling recipients his/her name and intention, remember that recipients don't need to tell him/her the name first until the caller telling recipients who is calling and for what. Remember any lack of identification is a scam. Sometimes just asking several basic questions and verifying caller information can easily stop people from making a big mistake. Another way to prove whether it is a scam or not is to tell them that you are recording, Real companies with real offers won't mind being recorded. Real surveys do not require privacy. If they hang up, then it is a scam.