Types of CyberCrime and Why Everyone, Especially the Elderly, Must Learn
Dallas, TX (PRWEB) September 14, 2013 -- idcloak publishes a new four-part article on the most common types of cybercrime, where it begins and how to stay protected.
The article’s author, idcloak's Robin Welles, explains the importance of educating the public on web-based threats, especially those from one particular demographic.
“There is an almost limitless number of ways one can fall victim to cyber-based fraud, and the sheer vastness of the threat landscape puts many people off even starting to learn.
“This would be fine - well, less bad - if threats were targeted randomly, but they’re not. The most dangerous types of cybercrime are targeted, and the victims chosen are those least likely to have the experience to protect themselves. Oddly for a question of inexperience, we are mostly talking about those who’ve been on the planet the longest: the upper-middle aged and pensioners.”
The article’s introduction presents the types of personal data that criminals seek online, suggesting that acts of cybercrime are generally conceived after successful identity theft.
What form of attack criminals choose depends on what personal information they have already acquired on the victim: “Whether it’s adding the victim to a phishing message mailing list, a brute force email hack or an out-and-out physical burglary… this all depends on what the criminals have already found out about the victim. Even just giving away your age or nationality can result in an increase in criminal attention.”
The article underlines the importance of safeguarding as much personal data as possible in order to reduce the chance of being targeted in the first place. It points at three main sources of identity data that lead to cybercrime: WiFi sniffing, email hacking and the mining of social media accounts, particularly Facebook.
Although Welles believes simply knowing about the threats is itself very good protection, some technical and behavioral recommendations are then given at the end of the article.
Further protective guidance is offered in Welles’ light-hearted article about the ease in which even unskilled users can defend against phishing attacks, another common platform for identity theft which uses manipulation and deceit. See: Security Essentials of the Anti-Phishing Hero.
idcloak Technologies is a Dallas-based internet security and privacy firm. The company is two weeks away from releasing its flagship internet encryption service, the idcloak VPN.
Gill-Chris Welles, idcloak Technologies Inc., http://www.idcloak.com, +1 7862109280, [email protected]
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