The Internet has become a need for everyone- We are all dependent on it for almost everything we do in our daily life whether it is for work, entertainment, or communication. And thanks to the widespread availability of a stable internet connection, owing to ISPs like Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and others, there is hardly anyone who hasn’t benefited from the technology at least at some point in their life.
Spectrum, in particular, covers more than 80% of the states with its superfast and reliable service. Spectrum Internet is not only affordable but secure and consistent. Besides, you can’t rely on a connection that isn’t safe against cybercrimes.
While the internet has become a need for us all, we need to use it with more care than ever due to the many forms of cybercrimes prevailing. Here are the top 6 of the most common cybercrimes you need to be aware of:
Table of Contents
1. Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is a form of harassment that happens online. It has become extremely common, especially among teenagers, owing to the widespread availability of the internet. Cyberbullying is an umbrella term, and there are many types of cyberbullying, including but not limited to reputation attacks, revenge porn, doxing, and harassment. These attacks might occur from someone the victims know about or a completely anonymous person who isn’t even easy to confront.
According to a 2019 report on cyberbullying, more than 37% of young people aged 12-17 have been a victim of online bullying at least once while 30% have reported it to have happened more than once.
2. Identity Theft
Identity theft, as the name shows, is a form of cybercrime in which the criminal steals personal information about the victim and uses it to commit crimes. This kind of crime is committed in a way that the actual criminal doesn’t get caught by the authority.
Identity theft can happen in many ways; a criminal might hack your device and steal your personal data, or he might scam call you and lure you into giving away your information. Some scammers have successfully created scam websites for corporations like banks. Now, if a person mistakes it for an authentic website and enters his information into it, he will be giving away his identity to the criminal mastermind behind it.
According to a 2018 online survey by The Harris Poll, around 60 million people in the US have been affected by identity theft.
3. Internet Piracy
Internet piracy involves the illegal use of copyright content. There are many forms of online piracy, including a wide range of legally protected content such as movies, music, and e-books.
Besides the fact that digital piracy is illegal, it has many other dangers. For example, if your young one opts for illegal sites to download his favorite movies, he might find some age-inappropriate content on those sites. Another danger is of getting your device infected with malware. According to stats, about 50% of the people who downloaded content from such illegal websites got their devices infected with malware.
4. Hacking
While there are many benefits of using the internet and online applications to make your work easier, not using it with care can do much more harm than benefit. Hacking is a broad term that includes getting access to your device for criminal purposes.
There are many ways a hacker can get unwanted access to your device, but the most common one is by introducing infected software. You might receive a phishing email or message that asks you to click on a certain link, and boom, your device is hacked, and now all your data is in the hands of the hacker.
While this is really dangerous for anyone to get his device hacked and data leaked, it is especially harmful to organizations. According to a 2020 report by Verizon, 86% of breaches that happened were financially motivated, with 10% being motivated by espionage.
5. EavesdroppingÂ
How do you feel about someone sneaking into your private conversations with someone? Not good. Eavesdropping, or snooping, is one such cyberattack in which the hacker sneaks into private communication between two devices and intercepts or modifies data being transmitted. This kind of attack happens when the attacker gets access to the network traffic traveling across the devices and is prevalent across unsecured networks.
6. Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of cyberattack where the criminal gets access to the central system of an organization and threatens to block access to it if the desired ransom is not paid. The whole attack occurs anonymously with ransom mostly asked in cryptocurrency so that the criminal never gets caught.
The WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017 was one of the biggest cyberattacks by the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm. The malware attacked computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system by data encryption and demanded ransom payments in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency to return the access.
To Sum Up,
While there are numerous benefits of the internet in almost every area of our life, carelessness in its use can lead to massive damage. As technology is advancing, so are cyberattacks. The above-mentioned are just a few of the most common cybercrimes. You need to make sure you are using the internet securely and cautiously to secure yourself from such attacks.
