Alarming Increase In Cyber Crimes, Birth Of “Fearware”!
When the whole world is going digital, the crimes which are happening online are increasing. Especially the crimes related to money. Haven’t we all gotten a mail once in a lifetime about winning the lottery worth $20,000? Or winning a poolside house in California? We just have to give $1000 to a specific bank account and the house will be ours! Do we give in to it or do we understand that they are just taking our bank account details to extort money and are trying to fool us?
A new term, Fearware, has come up. There are more than 3000 websites online available related to Coronavirus. These websites are created by amateur hackers who want to take money from your bank account if you click on their websites. They either take money from you or give you false information. MHA is keeping tabs on all the websites which are circulating false information about the Coronavirus because it is nearly impossible to control the chain of events happening in India. YouTube has the provision of removing false information about the coronavirus. Facebook is also following it and so is WhatsApp. We need to stop spreading misinformation about the disease and not give in to the whims and fancies of these hackers.
These websites invite us to access the information related to COVID-19. It tries to give us the information which is not available with the common man after the payment of some amount of money. After you pay that money, your account is tapped. This is the new way of profit for the cybercriminals. The population has fear in their mind of this now. Cyber-attacks have been on the rise always but the new term has come up during COVID-19.
Well defined phishing emails also do the deed for these hackers. Personal data is stolen through these emails and the devices of the person are affected. The exploitation can be at a very high rate. One of the major examples of this is that there is an interactive map for coronavirus infection created by a huge organization. Cybercriminals created a duplicate version for the same and if anyone opens the map of the cybercriminals, their device was infected by a form of malware that allowed the cybercriminals to get access to the person’s passwords.
Since we are now working from home, the level of this malware is also increasing. You can simply be fooled by an empty mail with the subject “message from the Boss.” When you open it you will be trapped.
When the PM cares fund was started, duplicate UPI addresses were floated along with it. There were also fake emails from the World Health Organisation for users. All these are petty ways of taking your money.
Another way was that an app called quick support both developed and COVID-19 was the mean backdrop for that app. When you logged into this app, the app to all your personal data and used it in bad ways. Considering it was started with the name quick support and Coronavirus was used as a backdrop, it gained a lot of audience. people had to enter the six digits of their debit cards, CVV and their ATM pin. Once these details were entered a huge amount of money was taken out from their bank account.
The cybersecurity commission of India aims to create a safe space for the people of the country but what will happen if we willingly give into all these attacks? We need to stay safe and not fall prey to these tactics. People must apply their own logic and reasoning before clicking on to something on the internet. Not everything can be positive or a source of information.
As the number of people online increases, the internet needs to be made a safe space for everyone because not everyone can look into the matters of cybersecurity. If going digital isn’t safe then what is?
