Social media has evolved since the rise of internet age. Various social media platforms such as Facebook, Telegram and Twitter have rise and changed our perspective on the ways we consume the internet. These platforms have revolutionized our day to day activities in both office and home to a degree where we can no longer doubt its benefits. However, every good thing comes along with its challenges. Cyber crime is one of the major challenges affecting this industry in a broad way.
Data theft as one the category of cyber crime (Hemraj Saini) impacts the society negatively in many ways. Information is copied from business or an individual without his or her awareness. This may result to theft of critical information such as passwords to accounts. Once passwords and key information are stolen they might be sold to third party persons or used for malicious purposes.
Another cyber crime is data interception. Data interception involves monitoring of network traffic in order gather information either about the user or what the user is doing at a particular social media platform. The attacker uses this information collected to either use it later to attack the user such as social bullying where the user already knows information pertaining the concerned victim.The attacker may also sell critical information to commercial companies.
Data modification is another form of cyber crime that comes with its negative implications too.Data modifications involves the act of tampering with private data. During this crime act, unauthorized person attempt to collect data that is being transmitted and modifies it the way he/she likes. This might result to depression to the victim where he/she might look like he is against/promoting certain parties. Depression may also come as a result of false intimacy.Basically, social media involves all the fun people get from being involved or associated with a particular social class.When people discover that that is not the case then the victim may undergo depression for quite some time.
Virus dissemination is a cyber crime that involves a malicious software being distributed among social media platforms to perform a particular objective. This kind of attack might be aimed at destroying valuable information that has been created over long time using a lot of resources. This kind of attack leads to financial losses to the victim. For example, a facebook platform created absolutely for media purposes might incur financial losses once that platform is brought down.
Cyber crime also leads to exploitation of government resources. Military usually depends on information to carry out their daily activities. Most of these information is usually enabled though advanced computers which upon manipulation might in bring unwanted expenditures. Government depends ultimately on taxes to raise money to fund its projects. Once these funds are misused then the society is the one that suffers the most. Furthermore the growth of society depends on how the government uses funds to enrich its citizens. Socia media should never become a barrier to this.
Social engineering attacks also pose a threat to the privacy and authenticity of the individuals on social media. Victims are lured by attackers to enter private information to wrong websites which is later stolen from them and used for malicious purposes. As more creative social engineering tools are being created by attackers to manipulate human predispositions, more private information is lost even with improved security features. Therefore, online education on the use of internet is crucial in order to avoid the attackers from gaining an insight for manipulating online users on social media.
Although cyber crime poses a lot of negative effects to the social media platform, one positive impact is the upgrade of social media platforms in order to evade similar crimes in the future which otherwise would not happen. Companies providing social media platforms are day in day out looking for vulnerabilities in their systems to improve so that they might not be exploited. Therefore, they hire experts in cyber crime to perform these vulnerabilities and also helping them out in preventing such loopholes.
In conclusion, cyber crime poses a threat to the development of society all over the world in information and communication technology. Therefore, authorities worldwide should come up with a common procedure to prevent and punish criminals that are involved in these acts. In order to combat cyber crime, new users should undergo an involved procedure to verify them during registration and obtain legit personal information of the user. More than often, companies should request the legitimacy of the users by undertaking them though a three way verification system.
Companies that offer social media platforms should also actively participate in educating their customers on safe ways to use the internet. This will enable curb against fake domains. Those found in the act of cyber crime should be taken to court and if guilty then a substantial punishment should follow up. Social media is a platform that helps a lot in spread of information quickly and therefore it should not be compromised in any way whatsoever.
