Opinion | Entering the arcane world of Cyber Crimes

What can be worse than your own best friend stabbing you from the bathe As a great proverb states “Appearances are deceptive”. Unaware about the internet we put our nose snugly into the visual world. The avail of internet is totally irrefutable but how can we deny the nefarious side of cyber world.While surfing through the internet we come across many illegal acts that take place in different corners of the world and here cyber-crime gets in. Cyber-crime is the online or internet based act. The word “Cyber” denotes not only the culture of computers but also the information technology and virtual reality. The world “Cyber” is the epitome of a wolf disguised as a sheep in order to get what it want wickedly.
As per the NITI Aayog report, juxtaposing crimes; cyber-crimes took the lead and now it has drastically increased over the last few years.Let’s unveil the underworld and become cognizant of cyber bullying. Cyber- crime not only unhinges mental health of the recipient but also binds a cloth on the server’s eyes and makes him blind. The server gets so deep in the dark world that he/she indulges the life of innocent people by selling their data on the internet. Cyber-crimes can occur at anytime, anywhere and with anyone through many unethical practices, be it Phishing, Hacking or Spamming. First, we will together unfold the mystery of phishing. Phishing, as the name suggests, is same as fishing. In fishing, a fisherman puts fish-food into the hook of the fishing rod with the intention of targeting the fish’s appetite and catching it without any difficulty wherein phishing the phisher sends e- mails from legitimate-looking websites and genuine-looking offer, rewards or concerns as attachments. If opened, it installs malware in our software or directs us to a website for entering our sensitive information.
This is how a person gets victimised. Phishing is the illegal practice of obtaining sensitive information through emails. People with malicious intentions usually fake their identity and pose as a known contact or organisation. They try to get information like username, password and credit card details through emails and the victim’s personal information like pictures, videos and data like files, etc. Gets leaked.Moreover, another outlaw we have is hacking. Intruding into a computer system for harmful purpose by identifying technical weak points of security system using smart programming solutions. The person involved in these activities is known as a Hacker. Hacking is also used in various departments who are in need like police departments once in a blue moon, but it is the most common way of catching people’s privacy and ruining their life. Thus it gets counted in the cyber-crime list.“This is a fraud network or I got a spam call” is a sentence often being heard in our day to day lives. Spamming is underrated crime of the visual world. It refers to the act of repeatedly sending unwanted e-mails called spams to a larger number of recipients. These e-mails are used for commercial advertisements. They are known as junk e-mails. They choke the internet and undoubtedly waste our precious time.
Stopping these e-mails is difficult but there are many services available on the internet which can prevent spammers from sending these e-mails.What initiatives should we take for not becoming a prey? Victims are victimised but we need not to. We can take the following security measures to avoid cyber-crimes.
• Avoid sharing your e-mail with everyone
•Never revert to any spam e-mail.
• Update your operating system, web browser and anti-virus
•Do not open emails without verifying the source.
•Do not share your personal information via e-mail. It must be only shared through a secure website.Our country, India has also taken few steps towards cyber-bullying. The various legislations that enforce cyber-security in India are as
• Information And Technology Act, 2000
This act is also known as Indian Cyber Act. It provides legal recognition to all e-transactions and aims to protect online privacy and curb online crimes.
Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008
This law aims to protect data privacy and information security. According to this act, the owner of a given IP address will be held responsible for the content accessed or distributed through it.
•National Cyber Security Policy, 2013
It is a policy in India that aims to protect public and private infrastructure from cyber-attacks and safeguards personal, financial and banking information.
Now as we are aware of the cyber bullying, we need to ameliorate the situation by making larger number of people aware of the dark reality of cyber.
Author is a Class: 8th SRM Welkin. He can be reached onEmail id: malikzara4463@gmail.com