Cyber crimes refers to criminal activities that are committed using computer network or hardware devices to harm unsuspecting victims.

Cyber criminals are constantly exploiting the Internet’s global reach and its technological growth to develop new types of cyber crimes and at the same time facilitate traditional crimes in new ways.

As their methods become more sophisticated along the way, it is important to learn the various types of threats that linger on the Internet to protect yourself:

• Online Fraud. Cyber criminals utilise emails, websites, chat rooms, and social media sites to make connections with victims. It is often conducted with the aim of deceiving victims and persuading them to part with their money.
• e-Commerce Fraud. The most popular e-commerce transactions associated with fraud occur in the airline industry, followed by general retail, electronics, ticketing, etc. Criminals use methods such as phishing and identity theft to carry out the crime.
• Social Engineering. A malicious attack that is accomplished through human interaction. It often manipulates victims, exploits their trust, or intimidate them into making security mistakes or give away confidential information such as banking details, passwords and other personal data.
• Trojan Horse Virus. It often disguises as a legitimate software. Users are tricked into loading and launching the virus into their computer systems. This enables cyber criminals to spy, steal and hold your personal data at ransom, and gain remote access to your computer system.
• Ransomware. This malware can modify or block data on your computer. In order to restore the computer’s performance and data, victims have to pay ransom to the cyber criminals. However, experts have warned that access to the blocked data is never guaranteed.
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). In a DDoS attack, hundreds or thousands of compromised computers and Internet connections are used to flood the access to a targeted system. It is usually distributed via botnets globally.
• Botnet. A ‘bot’ is a type of malware that allows an attacker to take control over multiple affected computers and carry out a variety of automated tasks such as sending spams, steal sensitive information and launch DDoS attacks.
• Phishing. Victims of phishing often would receive an email from a source posing as a legitimate company (e.g. banks). The email is often accompanied by a malicious attachment or link. Once the attachment is opened or the link is clicked, attackers are able to take over the victim's computer. This allows attackers to launch other attacks like keystroke logger to steal your private data, especially your banking details.
• Identity Theft. Cyber criminals steal victims’ personal information such as full name, date of birth, or credit card number to commit financial fraud or other crimes, such as entering or exiting a country illegally, laundering money and drug trafficking. The consequences that follow can be detrimental to the victims.