EFFECTS OF CYBER CRIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA

EFFECTS OF CYBER CRIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has evolved since the rise of the internet age. Various social media platforms such as Facebook, Telegram, Twitter have risen 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. Cybercrime is one of the major challenges broadly affecting this industry.This research paper will focus on effects of cybercrime on social media.

Data theft is one the category of cybercrime that impacts the society negatively in many ways. Information copied from business or an individual without his or her awareness. Therefore, leading to the theft of critical information such as passwords of accounts. Once passwords and some other key information is compromised, they might be sold to third party persons or used for malicious purposes.

Another cybercrime is data interception. Data interception involves monitoring network traffic to 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 exploit it later to attack the user, such as social bullying, where the user already knows information linked to the concerned victim. The attacker may also sell critical information to commercial companies.

Data modification is another form of cybercrime that comes with its negative implications too. Data modification involves the act of tampering with private data. During this act, an unauthorized person attempts to collect data that is being transmitted and modifies it the way he/she likes. Moreover, the change of private data may result in depression of the victim, where he/she might look like he is against/promoting certain parties. Depression may also come as a result of false intimacy. Social media involves all the fun people get from being involved or associated with a particular social class. When other people discover that is not the case, then the victim may undergo depression for quite some time.

Virus dissemination is a cybercrime that involves malicious software being distributed among social media platforms to perform a particular objective. The aim is to destroy valuable information created over a 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 its brought down.

Cybercrime also leads to the exploitation of government resources. The military usually depends on information to carry out their daily activities. Most of this information is made possible through advanced computers, which upon, manipulation, might bring in unwanted expenditures. The government ultimately depends on taxes to raise money to fund its projects. Once these funds are misused, then society is the one that suffers the most.  Furthermore, the growth of society depends on how the government uses funds to enrich its citizens. Social media should never become a barrier to this.

Social engineering attacks also pose a threat to the privacy and authenticity of individuals on social media. Victims are lured by attackers to enter private information to wrong websites. Attackers steal this information from them and use it 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 the internet is crucial to avoid the attackers from gaining insight for manipulating online users on social media.

Although cybercrime poses a lot of negative effects on the social media platform, one positive impact is the upgrade of social media platforms 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 incur losses upon exploitation. Therefore, they hire experts in cybercrime to perform these vulnerabilities and also helping them out in preventing such loopholes.

In conclusion, cybercrime 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. To combat cybercrime, 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 act will curb against fake domains. Those found in the act of cybercrime deserve taken to court, and if found guilty, then a substantial punishment should follow up. Social media is a platform that helps a lot in the fast spread of information, and therefore, no one should compromise this tool in any way whatsoever.