Do you know that cybercrime has evolved and increased at a mind-boggling rate over the last few years?
Perpetrators of cybercrime were majorly successful with identity theft, credit card fraud among other crimes they committed back in the days.
Today, with much sophistication and expertise cybercrime has increased.
Sadly, some persons have had the bitter taste of being scammed or had their data breached for exploitative purpose by internet criminals.
They surely would not pray for such experience to occur to anyone within their circle of influence.
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However, cybercrime has evolved over the years from what it used to be to a more robust, well organised activity.
In recent years cybercrime become more lucrative to criminals.
This situation is owed in part to the pandemic, shifting the whole process from offline to online.
According to Chainalysis, global losses due to cybercrime, rose to $7.1 trillion in 2022 from $1.2 trillion in 2019.
Years 2021 and 2022 contributed hugely to the astronomical increase.
Experts say, while the number of hacks and the damage caused have been on a constant upward slope, the types of cyber-attacks have shifted dramatically in the past five years.
In 2017, roughly 42% of recorded cyber-crimes were connected to non-payment or non-delivery.
This category includes purchases made via fraudulent online stores that never materialize and promised payments never arriving.
Personal data breaches and phishing scams constituted an additional 28%
Identity theft, credit card fraud and other cyber-attacks had a relatively low share in all reported cyber-crimes.
Five years later, phishing has become the most prevalent cyber-attack.
This past year, more than half of criminal online activity was connected to this long-running type of cyber-crime.
While phishing via e-mail has been around since the advent of the internet, hackers have specialised in other versions of phishing tailored to the corresponding channels.
Spear phishing, for example, is aimed at a specific group or role at a company, using more sophisticated wording and jargon to fool victims, while whaling targets the C-suite.
Other types of phishing unrelated to e-mail are smishing (text messages) or vishing (voice calls).
China out of all the countries in the world has the highest number of account breaches so far pegged at 14,157,775.
Direct behind china is Japan with 1,246,373 accounts breached through cybercrime.
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Next is South Korea, with 1,669,124 accounts breached.
Other countries like Brazil, Russia, Greece are also having their fare share of cybercrime.
