Tuesday 29 January 2019

CYBERCRIME

At the height of the XXI century it is almost unthinkable that we can live without the help of technology, since we have incorporated it into most of our activities, from the simplest and everyday things, as it is used to communicate with other people (through e-mails, social networks, mobile, etc) to the most complex management of our political and /or economic system.

However, the technology has somehow become a double-edged sword, since unlike in the past when you could identify with some ease both the crime and the criminal, now both the crime and who executes it are very well hidden behind a screen.

Despite the enormous economic investment to protect our data and information of all kinds, we know that every day a thousand ways are discovered to introduce new viruses or spam, to pirate privileged information, to commit extortion and/or cyberblackmail; at the same time we can notice that there is some specialization in phishing, in giving or creating fake news.

In this way, the presence of cyber-bullying is increasingly visible. In itself, this is alarming behavior, so it should affect us even more more when it can be noticed that it is encouraged from when a child and / or teenager becomes a frequent user of social networks.

In this sense, we have just begun to barely see the tip of the iceberg of this problem; we begin to be aware of the scope of the cybercrime. Since, we are not yet fully aware of what happens when we publish our life through social networks.

The use and learning of any type of technology has become widespread, but not so much time and effort is invested, for example, in the prevention of the use of social networks. Especially in very early ages, privacy and uniqueness seem to be decadent concepts in a cybernetical world that encourages users, as an ideal, to be an influencer, expose their life, and have the most followers and likes that they can. What is not always said is that not only could you receive compliments from the followers but also, in the worst case, you could receive offensive, destructive comments from the haters obviously protected by anonymity.

What can we do to tackle this problem? From my point of view, resources must be invested in education and information. It will be more difficult to be the subject to deception and / or extortion if we are informed, if we know the consequences and extent of overexposure of our life in social networks. Education understood as knowledge and empowerment will give us the necessary tools to somehow face and avoid being a victim in cases of cybercrime.