‘With great power comes great responsibility’ especially when it comes to a technology that is slowly becoming a part of some of our the most sensitive aspects of our lives – Finances, identity, and health. Ensuring its safety is paramount, you never know that the data you just typed remains yours or would be available for the entire cyberworld. However, the potential for the internet to be useful and a fun resource for making friends, entertainment, keeping in touch, learning is beyond our perception. But can anyone take the guarantee that no danger lurks when you turn online? Obviously no one.
As easy as it sounds, the internet is not a bed of roses – it can have the dark yet dangerous side that you might not be aware of, but not after reading this. You can easily drag right into the negative side, sometimes unwarned. The perks that we enjoy from the internet is limitless – almost everything is there for our convenience, but do you know who is paying for this comfort? Obviously, the one who is taking the advantage from.
Do you know?
- In July 2015, “The Impact Team” hacked the user data of Ashley Madison – a website billed as having extramarital affairs – exposed married cheaters to the world. The group copied users’ database from the site and started threatening the website to shut down or they release the personal information. After some days, the group leaked more than 25GB of company data including users’ information. Since the company does not delete the users’ details – many users feared out of being publicly shamed. Hackers exposed the names, addresses, height, weight and even the erotic preferences of 30 million people out of 37.6 million users, followed by resignations, divorces, blackmailings, and suicides.
- In late 2016, personal information of 0.6 million Uber drivers and 57 million of users exposed. The company got to know that the hackers breach the personal details of 57 users in late 2016, the company paid the hackers $100,000 to destroy the data but sadly didn’t verify that they did or not. The breach costs both reputation and money, the company lost 30% of value and stood at $48 billion after the incident. Not all the drop is credited to the breach, but one of the significant factors.
- Statistically since 2013;
Data lost or stolen is 9,740,567,988 and only 4% were secured breaches.
Every day, 5,175,647 data is being compromising
Every hour, 215,652 and every minute 3,594 records are losing.
Government sector has the highest propensity to lose the data
Healthcare was the hardest hit sector in 2017
Financial services is the popular target for cyber criminals
6,232,491,956 records of data breach only in the US alone
These are two examples of a large number of breaches that is being happened in the cyber world.
The Internet offers you freedom and this lead some or most people to act in ways that they would not behave in public like; posting a status that would never say in person, and/or sharing personal information of themselves or others that they would normally keep private. We behave with an illusion that the cyber world is the safest place in the world, but actually, it’s a highly vulnerable place with an abundance of digital criminals- invisible and difficult to detect and stop.
We have listed some forms of cybercrime, which need immediate attention and measures to be taken to avoid and protect yourself and loved ones from.
Cyberbullying – the same as bullying in the playground – the victim feels alone and frightened, while the bully does anything to hide from being caught. Cyberbullies can get harassed by hacking into your account, and/or post your pictures, images, and videos to cause you upset and frightened. It includes sending ransom notices or even death calls to people, commenting nasty things on their profiles or create sites to bash their looks or reputation.
Cyberstalking – another word for virtual-harassment, in this attack, mostly ex-partners harassed each other and/or happens when true relationships turn disastrous. It’s a stranger-to-stranger act that normally occurs when an unknown person bypasses the security protocols by hacking into someone’s account.
Sexual Predators – the cyber world open the door for young people to interact with virtual strangers – even people avoid in real life but do interact virtually. One in every 7th child has been sexually solicited online. Sexual predators often targeted users in chat rooms and started following them on their other profiles and similar interests, and finally become their friends. Currently, such people are widely available on well-known social networking sites.
Identity Theft – the more the information available online, the greater the risk of identity theft. It’s tempting to respond an email, open an attachment or post information on social media platforms, but does this temptation safe enough to fulfill? The consequences of such immature acts are huge,; you never know when a phishing scam use your information against you like; steal your money, commit crimes using your name, troubles you by replacing your real Id and password, or anything to make your life miserable.
Inappropriate content – beware of the sites you click – the internet has many sites featuring sex, violence and drug abuse and other illegal activities. Many times clicking those pornographic advertisement leads you to malware, the time you click, your system gets hacked or attract a malware, that can easily destroy your software or else compromise the data available on your system.
Want to protect from these online scams? Follow these Golden Rules
The internet is not as secure as we think, your android security and the privacy is at constant stake at the time you go online, follow these don’ts and avoid the dark side of the internet as much as you can.
- Don’t share your personal information – address or phone number.
- Don’t exchange pictures with anyone, especially indecent pictures.
- Don’t forget to go online without a VPN, find the best and cheap VPN here
- Don’t click to emails or attachments from people you’re unaware of.
- Don’t become ‘friends’ quickly with people you don’t know.
- Don’t meet online strangers in person
- Don’t go crazy with sexual ads that pop up when you visit an unknown website.
Get Data Breach Claims
Every cyberattack is different but regardless of how it is done, poor security and out-of-date processes are making this crime attainable. For data breach that has made such impact, Keller Lenkner Data Breach Compensation provides actions to these digital crime, whether an organisation only breached your information, or if your data was involved in a large data breach involving multiple people.