Cybercrime in Social Media

Cybercrime in Social Media

Cybercrime in Social Media  21

Introduction

Almost everyone, from children, teenagers, housewives, working professionals to unskilled manpower, spends time on social media for various reasons. Cybercrimes such as cyberbullying, MMS, threatening messages, fake profiles, identity theft, cyber harassment, cyberstalking, and so on are very common on social media. Cybercriminals not only target individuals but they conduct automated attacks using bots.

Structure

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

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  Impersonation/identity theft
  
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  Cyber bullying
  
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  Cyber teasing
  
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  Cyber defamation
  
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  Cybers talking
  
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  Cyber pornography
  
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  Revenge porn
  
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  Dropping Dox (Doxing)
  
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  Cyber swatting
  
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  Cyber trolling
  
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  Catfishing
  
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  Hacking and frauds
  
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  Vacation robberies
  
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  Fake online friendship
  
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  Buying illegal items
  
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  Preventive steps to be taken while using social media
  

Objective

Here, our objective is to make you aware of various social mediarelated cybercrime and preventive steps to safeguard.

Cybercrime in social media

Following are some of the common cybercrimes in social media:

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  Impersonation/identity theft: Cybercriminals obtain someone else personal information to commit frauds such as fake profile creation on social media, internet banking frauds, e-commerce transactions, and so on.
  

Figure 3.1: Social media fraudsThey may trick the victim using various techniques such as phishing, phone scams, or skimming (illegal methods to obtain credit/debit card information using skimmer) installed at ATMs point-of-sale).

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  Cyberbullying: It is an act of sharing false, racial, fake, or harmful content such as text, photographs, videos, and so on, which can cause embarrassment or humiliation to someone.