Cybercrime : Is The Internet Safe?

        In the 21st century, we have advanced exponentially in technology and are working on many methods of connecting everyone all around the world. At present the most common medium is through the internet.


        There are a ton of social media platforms like facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp etc.  where people can conversate with each other with a click of a button. Besides, the internet has also enabled us to buy things sitting in our home through online shopping sites like amazon, ebay, daraz etc.


        However, having such a vast number of users on the internet poses a serious threat of security as there are a lot of possibilities to exploit the system. Following such techniques to obtain information illegally is known as Cybercrime.


What is Cybercrime?

        Some acts of cybercrime include scamming and phishing, identity theft, fraud, ransomware attack, piracy, cyberbullying, money laundering, hacking etc. Everyday millions of innocent people are falling victim to such crimes while browsing the internet. They are mostly done by black hat hackers who aim to benefit themselves by hurting the victims.


        The most common type of cybercrime is phishing. Usually the hacker sends a link to the victims mostly via emails posing as an organization or bank asking to verify some of their personal credentials. If the victims are unaware of such crimes then they easily believe them and provide them with their information without any hesitation. But the hacker uses this information to login to their accounts and steal money or sensitive information that can be damaging to the victims. In Bangladesh, a common form of phishing was when hackers started calling bkash customers to verify their pin number which they used to then steal all the money from their bkash accounts without a trace. This issue has since been mostly resolved after bkash improved their security system and advertised not to give anyone their pin in order to raise awareness.


        However, this is nothing compared to the damage caused by data breaches. Hacker groups target big companies and banks in order to get a huge amount of personal data from them. In 2022, the data breach of Twitter, one of the biggest social networks, affected millions of people as the hackers gained a lot of information on the users such as their address, email, pass etc and released it to the public.


Increase in Cybercrime:

        Social media like Twitter are generally used by the mass of people for communication. And cyber bullying is a common scenario here. Statistically, according to security.org, people are spending 20% time on the internet after COVID-19 while the rate of cyberbullying has increased by a staggering 44%. And the saddest part is the maximum number of victims are children getting bullied by teens or adults with great toxicity.


        Another common form of cybercrime is software piracy. This is a big issue for the software developers because their hard work goes to the drain when hackers pirate their softwares and distribute them to the general public for free or earn a profit for themselves. To tackle this problem, developers use data encryption and security measures to make it hard for the hackers to access the source codes.


Is Cybersecurity enough to save us?

        With the increase of cybercrimes in recent years, the market of cybersecurity is growing rapidly. From a survey, it has been recorded that the potential for cybersecurity at present is $2 trillion and increasing daily. Aiming to strengthen the security of the users, many cybersecurity firms are developing new methods of firmware. 


        In conclusion, the internet has made our lives much easier than before but then again poses a lot of threat if we are not careful. It's very easy to fall victim to cybercrimes but luckily new technologies are invented daily to fend off the hackers and ransomware. Hopefully the issue will be solved in the near future with the increase of security so that we can surf the internet without any worries of being scammed.

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