Internet safety is your personal safety on the internet, also called “online safety.” All types of crimes that happen in real life can also happen in virtual life. However, on the internet there are lots of options to contact someone without being recognized or revealing the true identity, and this is what makes the crimes in the virtual world even more dangerous and tracking the criminals harder. Lots of people do things on the internet that they would not dare to do in real life when they are facing someone in person. This is one of the major reasons why the rate of crime online is growing fast.

Fact 1: Most importantly, it is necessary to keep yourself updated on what kind of crimes are taking place on the internet. Then try to find out what measures are needed to be taken to be safe from those crimes.

Fact 2: A National Summit states that almost 90% of children have used the internet since the age of nine years. Kids using the internet at such a young age and teenagers are specifically vulnerable to such threats. They tend to get attracted and trust unknown people easily and share their personal information with them. Almost 35% of kids aged between 11 and 12 use social networking sites with fake ages and share their personal information such as addresses and even phone numbers. Lots of child predators will be waiting to misuse the information.

Fact 3: The most expensive virus so far was MyDoom. It started its attack from Russia in 2004. It caused an overall loss of $38.5 billion. The virus used to come to the email address in a form of junk mail with an attachment. If anyone downloaded the attachment, his or her system would be a victim, allowing a remote connection to the virus server and also conducting DDOS against the SCO group’s website.

Fact 4: The stolen money can usually be recovered when it is in real life. However, the funds lost from a cyber attack mostly cannot be retrieved—at least more than half of funds cannot be.

Fact 5: Social media is where hackers find their easiest targets. People who spend a lot of time on these social sites are vulnerable to the threats like “Likejacking,” “Linkjacking,” “Phishing,” and “Social Spam.”

• Likejacking is basically a trick to redirect traffic to the site hackers are promoting without the users actually knowing it before they click on the “Like” button, which redirects them to some unrelated sites.
• Linkjacking leads you somewhere else (usually a malware site) when you click on a specific link.
• Phishing is when the hacker tries to acquire sensitive facts like credit card information usually by using a disguise for genuine sites.
• Social Spam is basically spam on social media and may be in any form.

Fact 6: Cyberstalking or Cyberbullying are extensions of the relationships outside the internet world.

Fact 7: Global loss due to cybercrime is estimated to be over $100 billion. The federal government has suffered a nearly 680 percent increase in cyber security breaches in the past six years.

Fact 8: The FBI’s most-wanted cybercriminal is Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev. He was responsible for the creation and usage of the malicious software known as “Zeus.” This software would be installed on the victim’s computer without authorization and would collect sensitive information such as bank account numbers and passwords. It is necessary to always keep yourself updated about such crimes and also keep your software updated in order to avoid getting affected by such programs.

Fact 9: S/Ws like Oracle, Java, Adobe Reader, or Adobe Flash on your computer makes it more vulnerable to the hackers because when these are installed, just one click on the banner with infecting content and your computer is infected. This means almost 99% of the computers are vulnerable because almost every computer has these S/Ws.

Fact 10: Some tips to stay safe online are:

Do not click on any attachment in an email sent by an unknown user or if the subject line looks suspicious.

Do not share any personal information unless you know the person very well outside the internet.

Do not click on strange links or download contents from any random sites.