Internet offers amazing way to communicate and express yourself in-front of audience that you can choose. There is plethora of ways to make your own audience and to promote your art. But, just as there are good people, and bad people in real world, likewise internet is full of cyber criminals. Over internet you will find people who use their cyber knowledge to help others, on other hand, there are people who perform cyber crimes. There are many trouble makers who commit crimes and sometimes even steal user’s identities.
The Era Of Cyber Crimes
There are plethora of organizations, companies and government teams spending billions of dollars to safeguard users from cyber crimes. In worse situations, people facing cyber crime have to pay millions of dollars to protect their assets. Today, cyber crime is growing at much faster rate than ever before.
As per one recent study, it was found that people in United State are more worried about their digital identity theft as compared to immediate life-threatening crimes, for example, terrorism.
Cyber crimes – They Are Real!
In a nutshell, cyber crime is original crimes that are committed on internet, and even on local networks. One cyber-crime can affect your digital device including smart TV, smartphone and laptops. Cyber crimes are active and they can be lethal. Depending on degree of impact, cyber-crimes can be classified into four major sections: –
- Against Individuals: First thing first, many people get directly affected by such crimes. This includes phishing, email harassment, spreading illegal adult material and social engineering.
- Against Organization: Next, many crimes directly affect companies and organizations. Sometimes companies’ online presence is exploited, this is a serious issue and can result in big consequences. Some cyber-attacks are targeted towards employees, while others on business data.
- Against Society: Financial Cyber crimes affect society as a whole. It can include selling illegal products, trafficking and gambling online, etc.
- Against Government: Biggest and worst type of cyber crime can result in prosecution by federal cyber security and law agencies. Also, known as cyber terrorism, this activity includes shutting down military websites and spreading false propaganda.
Aforementioned in top four types of classification of cyber crimes. Following is list of different type of cyber crimes: –
- Identity Theft: One of most common types of fraud is identity fraud; in worst scenario, you can befall a victim of this type of cyber crime. Though it starts small like for example, someone stealing your identity, driving license or more to steal property or for any other inappropriate use.
- Botnets: This word is combination of ‘bot’ and ‘network’. Basically, it is used in reference to large number of controlled computers a.k.a bots linked over one network. This type of cyber-attack is used to spread malicious files and software. Also, it can be used to infect other systems.
- Cyber stalking: It is a form of cyber bullying. Like bulling in real-world, cyberbully tries to threaten or harass another person. Mostly, cyber stalking case involves use of communication system, emails, and social networks
. - Social Engineering: Many people say that social engineering is classic type of cyber attack. It is mostly launched against individuals but many organizations have reported facing social engineering attacks as well as ransomware. Social Engineering attack involves manipulation people to get essential information. This information can be further used for any illegal purpose.
- Flood Attacks: Although a flood attack does not use water its damage is real. In this type of attack, major targets are domain names and IP addresses. Basically, botnet tries to flood IP addresses creating malicious requests and overloading servers. It also causes service failures and connectivity interruptions.
- Unwanted Programs: There are a plethora of potentially unwanted programs, also known as PUP. They are programs that were never actually officially requested but gets installed nevertheless. Typically, this type of software usually arrives bundled in other software, for example, adware, spyware, and malware.
Be Safe
At last, it is necessary to practice safety against cyber crimes. You can also take assistance from cyber security. Make sure to keep your software updated, enable firewalls while browsing online. Otherwise, you can use strong passwords and anti-malware software. If you use email for important work then keep email’s anti-spamming blocking feature turned on.
